


The Hand That Rocks The Cradle

by Belfire



Series: The Joker's Son [1]
Category: Nightwing (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)
Genre: And knives, Blood and Gore, Child Death, Dark fic, Depressing af, Detective Grayson, Dissection, Disturbing Themes, Elements of Horror, F/M, Ghosts, Grant is a good bro, Jason Todd Has Issues, Jason sees things, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mildly Dubious Consent, Murderers, Serial Killers, Statutory Rape, Torture, You will find nothing uplifting here, dark angsty red sweatshirt boi, meaningless death, no happy endings because fuck happiness, non-con somnophilia, other synonyms for murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-23
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2019-11-28 17:12:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 11
Words: 52,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18211202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Belfire/pseuds/Belfire
Summary: In which Joker takes Jason in before Batman ever even got the chance and the clown prince of crime certainly won't waste this opportunity to raise a little heir to his kingdom of insanity and murder. Jason was brought up a specific way, held up to specific standards and when it's kill or be killed, he knows which one he prefers.But how long can Joker nurture a spark before it turns into a full blown wildfire?Exerpt: Jason rolled his eyes. People were way too sensitive about pain. It's just pain. Getting punched in the face repeatedly was not worth that expression. Jason had been getting hit like that since before he could walk and he was perfectly, totally fine."Where do you want these, sir?" Jason struggled with the weight of the tools."Anywhere is good, lad. Anywhere is good."





	1. Red, Red Rum

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stylesofstraight_edge](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stylesofstraight_edge/gifts).



> *descends further into madness*
> 
> *ticks off archive warnings*
> 
> Okay, forewarning if you're here after seeing the tags, this fic is inspired by Crypt TV's "School For Lil' Killers" and my undying love for American Horror Story, so you can imagine how this is gonna turn out. It's immensely dark.
> 
> Seriously, I cannot warn you enough about how bad this gets.
> 
> Furthermore, while capes are a thing we don't have a Nightwing, just Dt. Grayson.

_There hadn't been a rainstorm this violent in the last ten years, not that the Joker could recount, that is. It hit the school's tall arched windows in sheets that rattled the thin painted glass and washed the stone walls clean, but would it reach the blood, he wondered? Blood that had dried into every crevice and crack the years of abuse had left this wretched city bearing._

_All this blood and no one noticed the extra droplets he left here and there._

_The clown went over that in his head as he walked unbothered through the torrential downpour, barely noticing the excess weight waterlogged clothes added to his frame or how grease paint turned to mud sliding down his face, leaving trails of colour. He was very intrigued by the discarded pile of soaking rags someone had taken the liberty to leave on the front steps of the school. Splash-splash-splash, puddles jumped up his ankles with every stride until he was looming over the peculiar mess of fabric and rain._

_Just a bundle of sopping towels, upon close inspection._

_The Joker's first assumption would never be that something was exactly as it seemed, hence why he nudged it with the tip of his ruined dress shoe and then repeated harder when that garnered him nothing. And it started crying, weakly at first, little sniffling mewls like that of a kitten's but those quickly turned into choked sobs._

_Interesting.... Joker leaned closer to inspect the creature, getting waterboarded by the rain pouring down and hitting the cloth over its face. It was coughing, spluttering, screaming by now. Tiny hands flailed desperately from the mess, trying to reach for anything that might help it._

_Joker let it suffocate a little bit longer before he wrapped both hands around its rib cage and picked it up. The thing - the baby, it weighed an impossibly non-existent amount, five pounds barely and it couldn't be more than a few hours old, still covered in drying strings of blood from its birth that the water couldn't detach from its purply-pink skin._

_The clown's scarred smile widened to reach his eyes._

_Very interesting...._

* * *

 

"Pay attention, class," the clown said, his grin spreading wider across his bleach white face. "Today's subject is a fundamental point in the art of murder since  _today_ , we revisit the basics." His voice shuddered with a breathy chuckle of excitement when the curtain around the big bird cage was pulled, revealing the thing inside. The term 'thing' was the most appropriate one to use, since Lonnie hardly bore a resemblance to the teenage boy he was just last month. Surgically, his jaw had been removed, leaving his tongue lolling out his throat and dripping beads of saliva down what remained of his face. His hands had been removed as part of last week's lesson; amputations and their psychological impact. 

He'd fallen behind on his assignments and Joker - the founder of Uncle J's School For Aspiring Killers - had a zero tolerance policy for a lack of enthusiasm for his teachings.

At the end of the month, the pupil with the least promise became a test subject for as long as they could cling onto life for. It was a  _constant_  struggle between students to climb through the ranks and save themselves the agony of being the next test subject.

"As you can see, kiddies," Joker went on, grinning, gesturing to Lonnie's petrified form. He was shaking, wide fearful eyes pleading to no one in particular.

"Lonnie-boy here has a nice,  _nice_  jugular on him. Perfectly healthy - just  _swimming_  with life! But as accomplished serial killers, we  _certainly_  can't have that. So today we revise the proper technique of slitting a throat. Any volunteers?" Deep set, ruby red, glittering like the gem itself, the Joker's eyes swept over the ten remaining children who made up his class but no one raised a hand. The question the teacher presented wasn't a question, they'd learned that answering was a fatality.

" _Jason_ ," the clown finally spoke after much specific consideration, gaze landing heavily on the boy who flinched when he heard his name.

"How about you, sonny?"

Robotically, Jason rose from his desk and he ghosted down the walkway, passing between his classmates, none of who regarded him with so much as a look. When teacher was in class, you  _don't_  avert your attention.  _Ever_. Last kid who did had his eyeballs gouged out.

On the surgical table beside the cage, there was a row of knives from smallest to largest and Jason automatically selected a long thin one with a straight edge, ideal for his purpose. Jagged blades were for damage and pain, use straight if you want efficiency.

"Now, observe, class," the byzantium gloved hand that landed on his shoulder made Jason stiffen, "Jason isn't the biggest killer, and that certainly makes it harder to pull a knife through someone's trachea but don't be disheartened, anyone's lack in muscle mass can be made up for with proper  _angling_."

At his silent cue, Jason unbolted the brass cage and reached in. Lonnie shied back into the bars, eyes squeezing shut, terrified tears already pushing betwixt his lashes. His violent shaking transferred into Jason when he was wrenched from the cage's small door, stumbling onto the bloodstained classroom floor.

"Show us how it's done, laddie." The Joker said, stepping aside with his hands clasped behind his back.

Jason nodded, stoic, arm at his side one moment and lunging around Lonnie's throat the next. Lonnie bucked helplessly against him, making guttural choked noises into the crook of Jason's elbow that tightened until the cartilaginous rings of his trachea shifted.

 _"J -_  sssonnn-" Lonnie gurgled and Jason couldn't take hearing it, he punched the knife into the side of his neck, pushing it away from himself in a single fluid cut. Blood sprayed all the way to the front row but the students didn't budge when speckles hit their faces.

Hot sticky crimson slid down Jason's chin in beads and his chest in sheets, sopping through his clothes. He blinked dully when he let the disfigured body slump to the ground.

"Capital!  _Excellent_  work, Jason!" Joker gave him an energetic series of pats on the back, so solid they made him stumble a step, almost onto Lonnie's twitching corpse.

"See, class, Jason has demonstrated that even if you're a runty serial killer, slitting a throat is perfectly accomplishable with a nice strong upward stroke of your weapon of choice."

There were murmurs of agreement and heads being bobbed in understanding, the room filled with pencils scratching across notepads.

Without being dismissed, Jason returned the knife and drifted back to his desk, in the second row. With a quiet sigh through his nose, he absently organized his textbooks; The Art of Murder, Massacres and Mass Killings, The Greatest Killers, The Uses Of Blood Outside The Crime Scene, and the book Joker himself wrote, The Joy Of Dead Things. He had other books too, but these ones were the only ones he needed for the autumn semester.

".... And class dismissed."

Chairs screeched back over layers of aged blood on the ground, chafing it. Jason stuffed his books into his rucksack, slung it over his shoulder and he headed for the door with the others.

"Remember to bring your hooked skinning knives for the next lesson." Joker sang after as they filed out, spilling into the hall where someone purposefully bumped into his shoulder. At once, Jason glanced at the tall brunet boy with the husky blue eyes and clear dusky skin. He was grinning. His name was Grant Wilson. Taking after his dad, he was the school's top murderer, Jason's only competition.

He was also Jason's  _only_  friend.

" _Killer_  work in there." Grant winked, nudging Jason in the ribs with his elbow.

"Was just basic revision." Jason shrugged, pushing his hands deeper into his pockets. He was dragging his feet, hunched over as usual.

"Whatcha doing next? I was thinking I'd go look for runaways to practice on." Grant walked alongside Jason at a casual pace. He was a head taller, broader by frame even though they were the same age. Maybe Jason was just runty like Joker said.

"Wanna come along, Jaybird? We'll have tons of fun."

"Sorry, Grant. I gotta go see Mr. Sionis for our weekly session." Jason exhaled under his breath, adjusting his hands around the straps of his bag while Grant hummed in understanding.

"Joker still has you visiting that old creep?  _Sheesh_." He rolled his eyes. Grant never did understand why Joker wanted Jason to go see their top sponsor. Roman Sionis had provided over half of the school's funding for the last five years on the condition that the most efficient pupils came to work for him once they graduated. Although, after Roman's recent routine inspection of campus, he'd taken an interest in Jason. Apparently, his  _technique_  was worth investment.

"You going out with your dad?" Jason asked for the sake of changing the topic. He would rather not talk about Roman. Or Joker.

"Nah, dad's in Blackgate right now. Or Arkham.... Maybe Belle Reve. Well, he's locked up for killing that family in a fire."

"Huh." Like Grant, Jason didn't make much of a deal out of it, not since his dad would probably have broken out by morning. Deathstroke was an inspiring killer and a tutor here at Uncle J's, long before his son was enrolled. Unlike Grant, who joined when he was seven, Jason had never known life outside these walls. He was abandoned on the front steps as a newborn, during a rainstorm so violent he almost drowned. That was nearly fourteen years ago and Joker did a decent job raising him, Jason supposed, it wasn't so bad. He couldn't complain.

"See ya later, man." Grant waved when the hallway split into two, their destinations leading them apart.

"Bye..." Jason mumbled half-heartedly. If he was quick, he'd have enough time to drop his books off at home and wash Lonnie's blood away before he had to go see Roman.

* * *

 

Eyes shut, Jason panted steadily through his nose, one hand flat on the smooth surface of Roman's office desk. With an even rhythm of thrusts, Roman's gloved fingers ghosted over his ribs and their subtle ridges, grazing his flank and settling around the curve of his hip. He gripped it tighter and picked up the pace, pushing deeper in until the boy's far smaller body was squashed into the desk. The solid wooden edge burned as it rubbed against his stomach.

Jason put effort into responsively moving underneath him, spine arching into his abdomen when through his parted lips, he groaned, tipping his head back and revealing the pale, vulnerable underside of his throat while his lashes fluttered open, fixed on the stack of paperwork in from of him. He was a world-class actor, pretending he liked it often added to his partner's enjoyment, he'd learned. Personally, Jason was impartial to sex. He could enjoy it if he tried but that was a chore. Majority of the time, he didn't bother.

But he didn't really mind getting used like this, even if it hurt at times but he only needed to say no or stop and Roman would. Jason refrained from that, though, he didn't want to bother the person who was gracious enough to let him gather experience for his studies.

"Mmh...." Roman breathed huskily into the crook of Jason's neck with a sinful chuckle. "You're such a slutty little thing, aren't you?"

"Yes, sir." Jason nodded. He'd heard that one before. Many times. It didn't mean anything so he could admit to it. But he was a slut, probably, given that most people his age didn't have sex with thirty-something crime lords.  No, that was exclusive to him while Grant spent all of last week with his chest puffed out, bragging about touching a girl's boob. Jason suspected the incident he was recounting was from fourteen years ago, when he suckled.

"Lemme see that pretty face." Roman murmured, swiping black locks of Jason's hair behind his ear. He turned his head a fraction, eyeing the smooth contorted folds of discoloured black flesh that made up Roman's frightful features. It took not facing him to stomach sex with him - Jason struggled to keep his insides from turning.

But -  _thankfully_  - the man finished soon, released Jason's arm from behind his back, and he was allowed to pull on his uniform before long. It looked like a regular boarding school uniform, smartly ironed, dark colour scheme, tie, blazer, Uncle J's coat-of-arms stitched over the right breast, and enough hidden weapons compartments sewn into the inside material to arm a militia.  _Normal_.

"Can I go, sir?" Jason asked quietly, looking at his shoes while Roman adjusted his tie and smoothed down the crinkles on his smart Italian suit.

"Not yet, son." Roman clicked the brass buckles of his belt shut, only looking at Jason once he did.

"You're not here only because you're a pretty thing, you know. Joker expects his golden boy to partake in some work experience, assuming you want to be my full-time employee one day." He  _didn't_  want to. Jason specifically didn't want to be a cog in Sionis Inc. He'd work for Mr. Penguin, or Dent, or anyone who wasn't Roman. It wasn't the sex. No, sex was good and all, a fun distraction he supposed but Jason wanted to be recruited for what he was good at -  _killing_  and not getting caught for it. At best, under Roman's full-time management he'd be a powdered-up sugar baby. And that's not what he'd spent his entire life working towards.

Besides, Grant would never let him hear the end of it. Jason already got an earful when his friend thought he was simply under a normal apprenticeship with Black Mask - imagine if he knew.

Quiet, Jason padded after Roman when he headed into the next room, the rich Egyptian rug swallowing up any noise his shoes may have made. It was instinct to sneak along quietly. Sometimes, Jason tried to make noise only to instantly regret it for giving away a position that wasn't necessarily hidden. Being covert was an important skill for a good killer but to him, it was nature.

"Come along, son." Roman broke the silence when he was showed into what he could only assume, was a conference room. Not your usual sort of conference, though, clear plastic sheets lined the walls - nice to see they'd been changed since the last mess - and there was no windows, no furniture, save for if you considered cleaning equipment left over from three days ago leaning upright in the corner. The mop handle was still covered in chafing black hand prints...

In the room, there was a boy on his knees. His wrists were secured behind his back, he was roughed up, fresh from a fight with the black eye and split lip. He couldn't be much older than Jason, eighteen or nineteen, but he looked somehow younger, maybe more.... Youthful. He was wearing a bizarre uniform that consisted of two main colours; crimson and lemon yellow. Yellow boots, yellow gloves, yellow belt, emptied yellow quiver on his back. So much yellow it made Jason's head hurt. The deep shade of his suit was near as red as his scruffy chin-length hair, tousled by the struggling he'd put up. He was glaring daggers past Jason, at Roman.

Stopping a few meters away, Jason stared at him dully. There were only two reasons that Roman would bring him here. He either wanted a three-way or Jason was here to kill the boy. He thinks he'd prefer the latter, he was still sore from the previous round of sheet music.

"Jason, this is  _Speedy_ ," Roman gestured to the bound teen, "he and Detective Grayson have been a consistent thorn in my side for some time now. Last week, they hijacked a shipment of mine, moving through Gotham's underbelly."

"You sell  _kids_ , you sick fuck! You probably  _bought_  this one too!" The boy snapped before sensibility could clamp his jaws shut. With the outburst and his inclusion in it, Jason's eyes sidled to Roman and the telltale twitch of his hand at his side, yearning to repay the mouthiness with a stinging slap across the face. But he withheld with every bit of restraint in him coming to call, which admittedly wasn't a lot.

"Grayson, for all his razor-sharp eyesight," Roman went on, "isn't very good at supervising his informants. My men caught Speedy patrolling Star City, without the pretty bird for once. It was as easy as flipping a switch to get the jump on him."

Nodding as the story progressed, Jason took a secondary study of the boy's appearance. He had freckles - like, a  _lot_  of freckles that looked like a chef had gone over his face with a cinnamon sprinkler. Jason liked them and while Roman droned on, he connected constellations of the freckles in his head. There was good old Aries, Orion, Taurus, False Cross, Venus' Mirror...

"..... And together with Grayson, he has taken too much from me to receive no punishment. This is to teach that pretty boy copper a lesson about interfering." Finally, they were getting to the beef of why Jason was here. He zoned himself back in to listen.  

"Jason, lad, you know all about killing for sport, habit, practice, and gain, but do you know about killing for s _how_?"

"A little." Jason frowned at the floor, trying to remember if he did. "But we haven't covered it in class properly yet."

"Well, let's practice a bit now, shall we?" Fondly, Roman ruffled his hair with a grin in his voice.

"Okay." Extra practice this early was a good way to get on top of his studies and maybe it was a little ambitious, but he wanted to be better than Grant by the time the next exam rolled around.

Habitually, Jason slid a buck knife free from the hidden holster beneath his blazer and moved toward the teen, who in turn, moved back the small bit he could.

"Kid, you don't gotta do this. Grayson an' me can protect you from  _him_." With an accusatory glare to Roman, he said but Jason didn't listen, he grabbed a fistful of red hair, yanked the teen's head back by it, and prepared to slit his throat. He was expecting a montage of pleading and begging for him to be merciful but that didn't come. Instead, Speedy stayed mum, trembling slightly but a higher power or something akin to it demanded he show no fear.

"Now, sir?" Jason inquired, tightening his fingers around the dagger's hilt, faultless blade hovering over Speedy's throat. He swallowed anxiously, Jason felt it.

"Wait a moment, boy." Roman told him, watching with a familiar sadistic glitter alight in his eye. He was thinking of every possible way to kill Speedy and the order to halt was him not wanting it to be quick. Jason did hope he wasn't expected to disembowel someone again. It left such a big mess and the screaming made his ears sore...

"Tell me, Speedy," Roman said, he'd be grinning if he had lips, "Do you think your friend will be too upset when you turn up dead?"

"He'll fucking kill you before that, you skull-faced  _bitch_." Despite the fear, Speedy was vicious to an admirable extent, spitting like a cobra with a mouthful of venom. But he was stupid. Talking to Black Mask like that? He must have a death wish.

There was an audible  _click_  when Roman's teeth set. Jason winced prematurely. He knew what that face meant. Speedy was  _worse_  than dead for that quip. Didn't he have  _any_  sense of self-preservation? 

"Actually..... I have a  _better_  idea for this one, Jason. Why don't you go get a sledgehammer from the supply closet? There's a good boy." He gave Jason that tiny smidge of praise while the boy wandered out to get those things he wanted. Poor Speedy but he did it to himself, really.

It didn't take long for there to be solid whacks on flesh and choked screams. Hardly noticing the familiar sounds, Jason took his time collecting the sledgehammer and other things he knew Roman's punishments entailed. He located the whips in the big oak wood wardrobe in the corner of Roman's office. There were studded ones and there were simple strips of leather braided into a thick coil. They all hurt the same, though. 

When Jason sauntered back, he was surprised that Speedy was actually conscious but the narrow-eyed look on his face was nothing short of...  _Stunned_? Hurt? Split lips, blood in his teeth.... Yep, it's pretty obvious by Roman flexing his fingers, rubbing his bruised knuckles, what happened here. 

Jason rolled his eyes. People were  _way_  too sensitive about pain. It's  _just_  pain. Getting punched in the face repeatedly was not worth that expression. Jason had been getting hit like that since before he could walk and he was perfectly,  _totally_  fine.

"Where do you want these, sir?" Jason struggled with the weight of the tools.

"Anywhere is good, lad. Anywhere is good."

Jason nodded obediently and set everything down, picking out the one he knew they would start with; the bone studded whip. He handed it to Roman and returned to the office to grab his notebook and writing equipment from his book bag, he had to take notes on killing for show. Notes were  _key_  to excellence in studying.

* * *

 

"How were studies, kiddo?" The Joker asked the moment Jason came in, through the back door that lead into the kitchen. Joker had his back to Jason, working on something laid on the counter, the knife in his hand rising and falling with a steady tap-tap-tap.

Jason found a place for his bag on the chair pulled out from the table before he came over. He lived with Joker at their house on the edge of the city,  _home_ , as far as he was concerned.

"It went pretty good." Jason replied with a shrug, distracted when he leaned over to see what Joker was doing. A wooden block chopping board was out, a handful of carrots being diced against it. Jason had always liked how long and orange carrots were. They were the same colour as Speedy's hair before it got matted.

He reached to take a piece but the subsequent boop on the nose stopped him. He glanced up at Joker; without his scary white, black, and red face paint, he could pass as a normal guy with green hair..... And a permanent Chelsea smile, of course. If he wanted to, Joker could hide the scars curving up his cheeks from the corners of his mouth with makeup but he seldom bothered. It was the last semester's prime topic that a good killer knows when to stand out  _and_  how to blend into society, Joker was the perfect example of that.

"What do we say, Jason?"

" _Please_ , can I have one?" He inquired when he remembered his manners and Joker smiled, handing him a carrot that was already rinsed and peeled. Jason mumbled a thank you, accepting it and yet again, he found it strange how easily Joker alternated between his wide demented grin and the 'domestic' smile he now wore.

"Did you learn anything new today?"

Jason nodded, biting off the head of the carrot, breaking it up in his teeth and swallowing it before he replied.

"Mr. Sionis taught me a little bit about show killing."

" _Oh_?" The clown's brows rose, probably pretending to be half as impressed as he came off. Jason appreciated the effort but he was getting too old to be babied. He was  _almost_  fourteen.

"What did he say?"

"Just how killing for show is the means of sending a message or giving the public a certain perspective."

"Yes, that's right." He nodded, still smiling while he diced. "But show killing is something that shouldn't be overdone by a killer. We stay out of prison by not drawing excessive attention to ourselves. Hitting headlines is fine every now and again but the  _moment_  you become the talk of the town, take a break and lay low."

"But....  _you_  kill for show a lot." The boy pointed out, frowning, confused.

"It's a little different for me, lad." Joker went on to explain, ever patient. "See, I make it my business to distract the good officers of Gotham from the school's comings and goings by giving them a big ugly mess to clean up somewhere else."

"Is that what Sionis meant by giving a certain perspective? Making the police not notice what we're doing by keeping them busy?"

"Yes, it's  _exactly_  like that." Pleased, Joker patted him on the head, threading his fingers through Jason's hair. The boy smiled at the pleasant sensation, it was soothing to have that on the tender patches of his scalp, where Roman used his hair as a handle.

"Keep up knowing things like that and you'll be better than that pesky Wilson boy in no time."

"I hope so," Jason managed to say in between munching on the carrot. All the sex and torturing  Speedy made him ravenous.

"Mr. Sionis let me practice on a boy he caught. His name was Speedy, I think." He was anticipating another exaggerated impressed reaction but the moment the name came out and Joker's smile faded, he knew immediately that he'd misspoken.

" _Speedy_? A redhead with yellow boots?"

Puzzled as to why he suddenly changed his tune, Jason nodded slowly.

"Uh-huh."

"Did Sionis say  _why_  you killed that boy for him?" Record fast, the knife had already been put down and Joker was rinsing his hands beneath a stream of cool water from the tap.

"Mr. Sionis said the boy and his detective friend made problems for him and had to be punished. I - I didn't know I was doing something wrong-" Jason's attempts at an apology were cut short when Joker came back from the sink, his still wet hand finding Jason's shoulder and gripping it tightly.

"We don't mess with capes, Jason. You  _know_  that."

"He - he didn't  _have_  a cape." As if that was any defense at all. It sounded stupid before he said it but it was the first excuse he could come up with. Under pressure, he unraveled faster than a drunk Grant Wilson.

"You know what I mean, lad. If we mess with them, they mess with us.  _Especially_  when we kill one of them."

"I....." Wavering, Jason's worried eyes met Joker's, grey not red, intent to stare at him until he cracked.

"I - I'm  _sorry_." Jason exhaled, licking his lips when his nervous gaze couldn't hold Joker's anymore; it became downcast. His chest was tight, heart beating quicker than he had an excuse for. He should have known he messed-up again. And again because he always did. Joker had been so pleased when Roman offered him an apprenticeship and he'd ruined  _everything_.

Joker sighed as well, frustrated. His hand left Jason's shoulder and he tipped the boy's head up by his chin.

"I have to go make sure this doesn't come back to us. I'll be gone for a few hours."

"O - okay..."  Jason's gaze didn't dare to track him as he made to leave but then the clown paused a meter away when a thought occurred to him.

"Oh, and I  _almost_  forgot."

Jason went rigid all the way to his marrow, his breathing quickening, tremors already reverberating through his bones before Joker's hand surged around the back of his neck and began dragging him through the kitchen. Fingers dug into his spine but Jason would be worse off if he resisted it, he struggled to keep up and not trip. 

Then there loomed the heavy solid wood door to the basement that ignited an instant panic in Jason, he forgot his previous precautions at once. He began digging his heels in and trying to twist out of the Joker's grasp, but he was stronger and that was obvious in the way he violently shook Jason like a ragdoll, digging his thumb into the soft unprotected muscle of his throat. Jason gasped, coughed, tried to pull loose and away from the horrible burning the man caused.

"I told you we  _don't_  mess with capes, Jason." Joker said through his teeth, both hands now encircling Jason's throat and only squeezing harder with every attempt to get away from him. That Joker smile that was too elongated for his face to fit was beginning to flicker over the domestic one and it didn't need the red grease paint to be terrifying.

"And since you didn't listen, daddy needs to discipline his birdie." While he spoke, he wrenched open the bolt that held the basement door shut, the clang of metal ten fold louder in Jason's head.

"N - no, pl - please, Joker. I - I'm sorry. I - I didn't kn - know-" Pleading was so  _not_  beneath him, not when he'd do anything to avoid getting put into  _that_  room.

"Daddy doesn't believe you." Was all the Joker said before he pushed the door open and violently shoved Jason through, uncaring of steep staircase that he knew the stumbling boy would fall down. White-hot pain burst through Jason's whole body when he hit the stone steps once, twice, thrice, all the way to the dirt floor that was hardly a cushion when everything already ached.

The door slammed shut and took the only illumination the damp basement had with it, turning panic to full-fledged terror in Jason. Shaking, breathing in fast bursts, he tried pushing himself off the ground when the lock fell into place and the footsteps outside grew distance, an invisible dagger wedging deep into the wrist he must have twisted but regardless, he scrambled onto his feet and backed fearfully into the wall, eyes darting across the darkness to nothing.

That's just it. There was  _nothing_  down here but him and the bugs that skittered earthen floor, but the fearful child who'd more or less grown up in the dark of these four cold walls wouldn't let him believe that. Like all the other times, the moment the light went away he was plunged into a myriad of voices and distorted faces dancing on the folds of blackness. Pale skin, gaping eyes, blood filled mouths, images come to life from his nightmares.

"N - no..." Jason whimpered when they got closer, his back sliding down the brickwork until he was on the ground, drawing himself into a tight ball with his hands gripping his head, relentless on his hair. They were  _only_  in his head, ghosts didn't exist and he was only imagining that Lonnie was down here with him, screaming accusations and tormented lust for vengeance. Lonnie and all the rest of them that had amounted to an impossible number over the years.

He always broke down here, sobbing into his knees, Jason didn't react when something detached from the wailing mess apparitions and sat next to him with a quiet sigh. Through the blur of tears, he hardly made out the smudges of yellow and faded red, drenched in old blood and reeking of agony.

* * *

 

The moment they had their verbal MMA match and Roy stormed out their meet spot, Dick wanted to go after him. He  _should_  have gone after him but experience would say he needed to let his friend vent. He wasn't even sure what menial thing struck the match between them but he had to settle it. They were friends but they were also partners of sorts, Roy's vigilante lifestyle made him an excellent informant but where to draw the line between professionalism and social life? 

Whiskey in hand, Dick sat up while night crawled to dawn, the bottom of the glass coming quicker with every hour Roy was out there, in the city,  _alone_. He needed to find his friend but he kept saying 'give it fifteen more minutes, he'll come back like he always does'.

Morning rolled around and Roy still wasn't home.

And then Dick saw  _it_  on the news. The glass shattered from three angles as it fell from his hand but the fragments had barely settled when he'd ran out.

The tattered red and yellow uniform he used to say was too blatant was the only thing that allowed him to recognize Roy where he'd been  _nailed_  to the front door of the GCPD building, crucified through the palms and joints of his elbows. His tongue was carved out of his mouth, his throat cut clean to the point where his spine and scraps of muscle were all that kept his head attached to his body. His flesh was more bruises than skin, whipped off his back in chunks. Both his hands were shattered, fingers twisted and snapped back. Someone had  _burned_  his right eye with a cigarette.

But worst by far? It was unarguably the bloody stitch work embroidering Roy's exposed chest with the letters RS, directly beneath his collarbone like some sick calling card.

Dick didn't care that all the present media and surrounding police who tried to stop him from getting through until he flashed his badge could see him scream in rage and the sky-crashing, earth-shattering  _misery_  that rolled over him like a tsunami.

Roy - his friend who he  _loved_ , was so obviously dead that there wasn't a point to checking his pulse the way Dick did, with trembling hands, breath violently shuddering to a pained whimper when his fingers met cold lifeless flesh.  _No - no, no_. This couldn't be real. It  _couldn't_!

Someone would  _die_  for this. Whoever did this would fucking die if it was the last thing Dick ever did.

With the whirlwind of raging polar emotions wrecking him, he hadn't noticed the note stapled to Roy's chest. The text was unclear with capital letters popping up at random places, like a kid did it but that wasn't as disturbing as it was to think that someone took the time to  _hand write_  this.

_"Interfere with my operations, Grayson, and your stuff gets broken."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gifted to my OG dude, stylesofstraight_edge, a reader you would be truly lucky to have. Thanks for all the love, mate, sorry to gift you such a disturbing piece of fiction XD


	2. The House On Carnival Road

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Intent on the lines his pencil left on the perfect white, he was trying to remember how he got the angle of slitting Speedy's throat so perfectly when movement in front of him caught his attention and he glanced over his sketch pad, nearly having a heart attack the instant he did. He jumped in fright when Speedy had silently come so close that Jason gagged on the stench of old blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You're seriously still here after that first chapter? I am officially concerned for your mental health.
> 
> We stan the sexy black cop Kori from Titans, it's the only one you'll find here.

Biology class, or anatomy, or whatever the fuck this twisted forty-five-minute session was called, Jason hated it. Who wouldn't? Professor Pyg, the portly little man with the lab coat and plastic pig mask couldn't make these lessons any more stomach-turning if he tried. Right now, for example, Jason was watching him separate a spinal cord from the rings of bone that had protected it, all attached by strings of muscle fluid to the corpse on the table before him.

Jason was happy his desk was far back, the kids in the front row were looking a little bit green in the face. They'd been taught that nothing was more savory than a fresh kill but that body on display had been rotting in the morgue for a week. _Rancid_ did not do it justice.

Resting his chin on his hand, staring dully at the professor trembling like an excited child on Christmas eve, Jason had retreated completely into the furthest nooks of his head when a paper airplane landed on his desk and he snapped back into reality with a jolt. Blinking from the suddenness of it, Jason glanced around him and caught Grant's eye, three spots to his left. Of course. He had no other friends, who else would it be but him?

Smiling, the Wilson boy gestured to the plane, urging Jason to open it and gradually, he did, unfolding the crumpled paper in his hands, skimming over the text.

_"You okay, Jaybird? You look down."_

Jason turned it and wrote his reply,

_"Yeah. Tired."_

He folded it back into a plane and cast it across the space between them where Grant caught it, deftly snatching it mid-air and frowning at the response, giving Jason an inquisitive arch of his brow. Soon, Jason was reading the forwarded message.

_"What's her name? Tell me EVERYTHING."_

_What_? The question must have been expressed blatantly on his face since Grant gave a shrug with a sneaky smile.

" _Jason_ _Todd!"_ Professor Pyg snapped, giving the boy a fright that went through his entire body, his desk nearly flipping with the suddenness of him twisting around to face the teacher.

"Passing notes in _class_?" His disapproving frown was visible despite the mask, chubby hands tightening on his hips.

"I think you should pay the principal a visit after class, don't you?"

Groaning, Jason nodded half-heartedly, back sliding slowly down his seat. _Fuck_. This would be the third time this month he was called into the principle's office. Joker was getting tired of his misdemeanors and he was already on thin ice with the clown after the Speedy disaster. How did Joker cover that up, by the way? It hit the news but headlines were putting Black Mask on blast, blaming him for all of it. The cops couldn't do anything, not with how powerful Roman's criminal empire was but it certainly saved the school some grief to be out of the spotlight.

"At least Joker's like your dad or some shit," Grant assured him when class ended, falling into step with him.

"You won't get into too much trouble."

"Yeah and _thanks_ for sharing accountability." Jason rolled his eyes, adjusting both hands on the straps of his backpack.

"It's damage control, Jaybird. You wouldn't have gotten into any less trouble if I confessed my half of the crime." Grant shrugged nonchalantly, to which he received a glare from the corner of Jason's eye.

"You're _such_ an asshole."

"And I'm your only friend so you can't say shit."

"I have other friends." Jason sulkily grumbled and the scoff of disbelief was expected.

"Like _who_?"

Briefly, Jason glanced at the blur of red and yellow lingering on the edge of his vision. He was there again. He'd been there for the past week and it was getting harder and harder to ignore him. The others didn't follow him from the basement.

" _Nothing_? Ha! Knew it." Grant smirked to himself, as cocky as he was sure of his position in Jason's life. It went both ways, the Wilson boy wasn't exactly popular either. Kids were scared of him, mostly because of who his father was.

"Maybe you should go work on your stabbing technique. Joker says it's _sloppy_."

"He's tryna make you look better."

" _You_ make me look better since you don't revise at all."

"Can't accept that I got natural talent?" He grinned. "I don't need books to tell me how to off a guy."

"I don't either but that's like saying you don't need an art teacher to draw a circle. If you wanna advance to the Mona Lisa, you need to use the resources you've been provided with."

Grant leaned over and pinched his cheek affectionately, his higher point of gravity making it easy to ruffle Jason's hair a little too rough.

"I love it when you think you make sense."

Swatting his hand away, Jason smoothed his tousled locks down in irritation.

"Unless you wanna join me in Joker's office for something _you_ did, this is where we part."

He sent a look to the approaching door with the word 'principal' written over the glass, his bottom lip going stiffer with the unpleasant memories attached to that place. Grant got into trouble a _lot_ , one more strike this semester and he'd get expelled, hence why Jason didn't mind taking the brunt for him this time.

"Alright, then but I need you to come over tonight, 'kay?"

" _Why_?" Jason frowned suspiciously, experiences had taught him to take everything out of Grant's mouth at arm's length.

"Just do it." Without any reassuring further explanation, Grant whisked himself down the hall at a speed that Jason would have to jog to match. While he went into the office, he wondered what the Wilson boy wanted this time and steeled himself to put his foot down in regards to not doing Grant's homework for him. He always lost that argument, though.

"Mistah J ain't here, kiddo." The secretary (well, secretary/twisted counselor), Harley, announced when Jason popped into the reception area, furnished only with a couple of chairs in a row, her desk and a palm-looking houseplant that had last been watered three months ago.

"Where is he?" The boy asked, coming to stand a foot from her work surface, tipping his head ever so slightly to the side. He did his best to always keep respectful eye contact with Harley, but her low cut tops just screamed to draw attention below her neckline so that made his goal of being a gentleman a little hard.

"Principal puddin' went out this mornin', said he had a meeting or sumthin'." She casually let him know, chewing her gum so loudly that her words were almost inaudible. She was wearing the edges of her fingernails away with a bright pink file that had a rhinestone handle, taking great care to make them all level.

"I'll just wait for him then." Harley agreed with a disinterested nod and Jason exhaled quietly while he slumped into a chair in the waiting room, dropping his backpack onto the one next to him. He prayed Joker wouldn't take too long, Mr Nygma would not be pleased if he missed murder history class. He was already slightly behind in that subject.

To pass the time, Jason took out his sketch pad and continued shading the picture he'd been working on during recess. A boy, nailed to a door with his throat cut and tongue carved out, among other horrid things that shouldn't be seen beyond nightmares. Which one of Speedy's eyes did Roman have him burn out again? The... right one? Jason blew his cheeks out in frustration when he couldn't recall that specific detail so he just made Speedy's head bent down so he could hide the upper part of his face with a shadow.

Drawing his victims - _no_ , his class _assignments_ helped to get them out of his head. Speedy really was finals grade work that Jason was proud of, despite how mad Joker got. He'd bask in the afterglow of the perfect murder in silence.

Intent on the lines his pencil left on the perfect white, he was trying to remember how he got the angle of slitting Speedy's throat so _perfectly_ when movement in front of him caught his attention and he glanced over his sketch pad, nearly having a heart attack the instant he did. He jumped in fright when Speedy had silently come so close that Jason gagged on the stench of old blood.

Deep crimson ran down either side of Speedy's mouth, barely able to hold his head up with how clean his throat was cut, the eye they left in his skull dull and lifeless but still the expression hit Jason to the marrow like a spear of ice. Blue veins swelled up from Speedy's sickly white skin, so pale it was almost transparent.

He didn't do anything, say anything, just stood staring as if there was something he was expecting from Jason and for the moment the boy stayed frozen, part of him contemplated what it was. Then his body remembered how to move and he shot up from his seat, grabbing his bag and hurrying out of the office. Harley gave him a confused look that said she didn't see _it_.

Jason ran down the hall and only slowed when he was within sight of Nygma's classroom door, glancing over his shoulder and to his relief, the ghoul didn't follow him. His breathing was irregular, stumbling in his throat and he tried to calm it before he stepped into class, smoothing down his crumpled up blazer to hide how flustered he was.

Damn ghosts. Even after years they still got to him.

"What's wrong with you?" Duela Dent asked with implied critique when he sat next to her, at his assigned seat. With her mismatched eyes, she tried to pick answers out of him just by looking. She didn't actually care, she just wanted to know what had him panting so she'd have something to pass the time before teacher came in.

"Nothing, Duela. Absolutely fucking _nothing_." Glaring at his hands on the table, Jason tried to frighten away the smudge of red and yellow reappearing at the edge of his field of vision with the expression.

He didn't go anywhere.

* * *

 

"Can you repeat your account to me again, Mr Kerr?" Dick sighed, raking his hand back through his hair. For the fourth time this week, he found himself sitting in this same chilled metallic seat in an interrogation room with his superiors watching him from behind a one-way mirror. He felt their impatient eyes boring into him while he grilled the only witness to the crime that kept him up at night.

Something about the guy didn't sit well with Dick and when again he was regarded with his ash-grey eyes and the twitch of the scars curving up his cheeks, he got that feeling again.

"I was out walking my dog," the man began with fake patience he'd managed to maintain perfectly over the course of these various interviews.

"What's your dog called again? I forget."

"Jay. Found the poor little mite sleeping in a box under a bridge. Mixed breed stray, most people would be scared of them but that's because they don't know how to train them to be obedient. Love my munchkin."

"Uh-huh," Dick tapped the tip of his ballpoint pen on his notebook, taking his frustration out on the previously written accounts that didn't change one bit, no matter how often he made Mr Joseph Kerr repeat them back to him.

"Around what time?"

"Let's see," He held his chin as he thought, a small frown forming. "I wanna say... _nine-ish_? Yes, I was taking Jay for his evening walk when I passed by the GCPD building and saw these masked ruffians.... _hammering_ some poor boy to it. It was _awful_." Oh, he was _good_. The way Kerr wouldn't look at Dick when he said that made it seem like it was a difficult memory for him. By all intents and purposes, his story was believable and since the security footage was taken out, there was no way to see if he'd actually been where he claimed to at that time.

But Dick couldn't get it out of his head that the man opposite to him was lying through his teeth.

"And what sort of masks did you say these men were wearing?"

"Some sort of gimp masks, I think, as unbelievable as that sounds but that got me thinking, don't _Black Mask's_ men dress like that?"

"They do but why didn't you call the police immediately after you saw this?"

"Well," Kerr sat back, folding his arms but not before he tucked a strand of his strangely green hair behind his ear. "For one, I was afraid it was gang-related and I didn't want to get involved, lest they hurt my Jay. Another thing, they were on this very building's _front_ _steps_ , I assumed the police had nightwatchmen who would notice that a corpse was being nailed to their door. I'm sorry to say it but that is just poor police work."

As civilly as it was worded, that last part came with an implied accusation. Dick's hand tightened around the pencil, knuckles cracking but he kept his composure, managing to hide how rage-inducing Kerr was and keep it from his voice when he spoke,

"And then you went home to...?"

"Carnival Road, 24 A. I put my Jay to bed and spent the whole night struggling with what to do. By morning I was here to report what I'd seen. I wouldn't have been able to sleep unless I did everything I could to help you capture that poor boy's killer." He leaned forward, lacing his fingers and meeting Dick's gaze head-on.

"How's that part going, by the way?"

The detective swallowed the growl and his urge to get his hands around Kerr's neck, forcing a poker face over the glare his facial muscles were itching to form.

"We're putting together the pieces." And that was a total lie. Kerr was their only lead and he was a dead end. It couldn't be more obvious that Sionis did this as revenge for Dick and Roy busting his human trafficking ring but there was more to it, he could tell. There had to be since a simple murder charge would never hold up in court against Gotham's most powerful crime lord.

And someone was paying for killing his best friend. Whoever the bastard was would die, Dick didn't care if it cost him his badge or his freedom.

Kerr checked his invisible watch, raising his brows, also dyed green.

"Well, would you look at the time... As much as I like talking to you, detective, I'm afraid I need to pick up my honeybunch Jay from doggy daycare." He rose while he spoke, pushing his chair back with a scrape against the stone floor.

"I'll show you out." Dick struggled with the falsity of the smile he gave Kerr. He hated to let him go but there was no evidence to hold him for as screaming suspicious wasn't enough to justify a search warrant. There was just something skin-crawling about Kerr that Dick couldn't get over.

"Grayson, a word?" The commissionaire met him in the hallway when they stepped out of the interrogation room and Kerr went on his way, completely casual.

"Sir?" Dick turned to Gordon, immediately straightening his already immaculate posture.

"That's the fourth time you've had Kerr in. You keep this up and he can sue you for harassment."

"He knows something, comish," Dick insisted. "Something he's not saying."

"You _don't_ know that. All you've got is speculation." The commissionaire regarded him in a no-nonsense manner over the edge of his glasses and Dick was once again reminded that the whole department thought he was going mad over this case. Probably, he was a bit but that didn't change the fact that Kerr was a liar.

"Look, Dick," Gordon sighed. "I don't want you ending up with a lawsuit on your hands and I understand Speedy was a friend of yours but it's been a week and you've got _nothing_. We don't have the resources to chase after Black Mask and-"

"You want me to _drop_ the case?" Dick gaped, jaw dropping. _Surely_ Gordon wasn't serious. With the information on criminals that Roy gathered as Speedy and just _gave_ them and all the times he was working beside the GCPD to solve impossible crimes, they were just going to pretend someone didn't brutally murder him and crucify him to their front door?

"Sir, we _owe_ Speedy - we can't let his killer go free."

"And I don't _want_ to but if we go after Sionis directly, well... he's got friends in high places. I won't put my men in a crossfire over some vigilante who willingly put himself on the chopping block. The ax came down, Dick, Speedy knew that risk. He took it but I _won't_ make that choice for this department."

Dick fixed him a hard set expression, a muscle in his grit jaw twitching while he turned his head to track Gordon stepping around him.

" _Drop_ the case, Grayson." Were his parting words, so stern he didn't leave any wiggle room. When he wasn't looking, Dick embraced the possibility to leer at him and mouth 'fuck you'. After all the leg work Roy put in for this department, he was practically an honorary officer and they wouldn't do so much as investigating his homicide? _Bull. Shit._

"I know that look." His partner raised her gelled eyebrows when she came out of nowhere, holding two Starbucks cups, one of which she extended to him.

"What are you planning, Dick?"

"Nothing, Kori, don't worry." He muttered but he did accept the coffee, taking a sip despite the temperature. He burned his mouth but he didn't care, it couldn't compete with the heat of the anger currently residing in him.

"Comish told you to drop it, you'd be smart to listen. You're already on thin ice with him." Kori's advice, as heartfelt as it was, was unheeded. Dick knew he wasn't going to follow those bullshit orders from the moment Gordon gave them to him.

"R - _Speedy_ deserves better than to be swept under the rug just 'cause Gordon's afraid of Black Mask."

"And I agree but think about the greater good. This department is treading water as it is, we can't afford to piss Black Mask off any more than you and Speedy already have."

"So we bend over like we're his bitches? It's scum like him who we should be protecting Gotham from."

Kori caught his arm, caught his gaze harder still and when she spoke, it was in the tone of a commanding officer.

"There's a way to stay alive in our line of work. You and Speedy didn't obey it and what happened? Sionis cut Speedy's throat, carved his tongue out, broke his hands and _crucified_ him as a warning for you and the GCPD. You can't blame Gordon for taking that warning for how serious it is, he's being smart, Dick."

Growling, Dick jerked his arm free.

"I can't believe you, Kori. He was my-"

"Your _partner_?" Kori cocked a brow, crossing her arms, her face was as unrelenting as Gordon's. She wasn't playing with him anymore.

"I know I ain't a redheaded archery boy you can run around the city playing dress-up with but _I'm_ your partner, Dick. Speedy was an informant and _sometimes_ informants die. It's sad but that's life."

Dick's brow furrowed on her, fingers tightening around the cardboard cup. No matter what Kori or Gordon said, he wasn't letting this go. Maybe he should have but Roy hadn't feared Black Mask so Dick would glean off that. The last time he saw his friend alive, they'd been arguing but he needed the heat of that fight to be his motivation.

* * *

 

Carnival Road was a real place, _surprisingly_ , a suburb and Dick took a trip there after work, currently sitting in his car outside the place Joseph Kerr claimed he lived. The windows were dark and the garage empty, no one was home.

There was no kennel outside or a chain or toys for the dog he said he owned but maybe it was an indoor animal. He kinda disliked that had a reasonable explanation.

Adjusting his aviator shades, Dick watched a kid coming down the street, drawn into his own world as he stared at the pavement. He was a student, coming home from school, judging by his uniform and the backpack he was lugging around.

Intrigued, Dick watched the little ravenette take a left into Kerr's driveway. Kerr didn't mention he had kids. This boy small was but looked around twelve or thirteen.

Eyes narrowing in thought, Dick opened the car door with a subtle click and got out. He needed to only glance at his and Roy's unfinished casework on the passenger seat to tell him to ignore every word from Gordon's mouth against pursuing this case.

If roles were reversed, Roy wouldn't do anything less.

"Hey kid," Dick called after him, waving when the boy glanced over, visibly alarmed by the sudden appearance of his voice.

"Got a sec to talk?" Dick focused on putting up a non-threatening air as came up the driveway, showing his badge to settle the kid's clearly jittery nerves. The kid's hand slid off the front door handle and he turned slowly as if caught doing something he shouldn't. The badge did the opposite of what Dick wanted, instead of being reassuring it unsettled the boy further.

"I'm Detective Grayson from the GCPD, I need to ask you a few questions if that's alright?"

"Like what?" He pushed his hands into his pockets, blatantly uncomfortable. Kids usually trusted cops, thought they were cool.

"For starters, what's your name?"

".... Jason." He was so painfully hesitant to give up anything, it only added to Dick's suspiciousness. And wasn't _Jay_ the name of Kerr's dog? Odd coincidence.

"Jason Kerr?"

"I suppose so." Jason shrugged, sounded like he wanted to trail off but then snapped back into reality with a jerk, nodding vigorously.

"Y - yes, that's my name."

"Uh-huh." Dick didn't have to look to see all the signs that he was either extremely confused or lying. But why would Jason lie about his name? Maybe Dick was just seeing things where there weren't any, four days of no sleep tended to make him paranoid.

"Where's your dog, Jason?" Dick inquired as casually as he could, eyes narrowing on the boy since what he said next determined whether or not he had solid evidence Kerr was lying.

"Detective Grayson! What a... Surprise." Dick cringed when he heard the voice over his shoulder and turned slowly on his heel to face Joseph Kerr himself, joining them by the front door with a polite smile on his lips and a squirming puppy dog in his arms. Dick cast it a brief look, it was a scruffy mutt wearing a collar with a tag stating this address was the one it lived at. Just like described. _Dammit_.

"Hello, Mr Kerr," Dick bit his tongue to keep his tone pleasant, gesturing to the dog.

"Is this Jay?"

"Yes, indeedy. This is my lovely _Jayakrishna_ , Jay for short." Kerr affectionately ruffled the animal's ears, briefly smiling at it. The dog wagged its tail madly, lurching up and licking its owner.

"Jay like your _son's_ name? Doesn't that get confusing?" Unintentionally, Dick's voice got too forcibly sweet to be taken for real, making his distaste apparent. Kerr's smile changed too or rather, it remained the same but a strange glitter came into his eye, tiny but present.

"Are you implying I don't know the difference between a dog and my son, _detective_?"

"Not at all, sir. I'm just asking you a question." The tension between them grew so thick you could cut it with a knife and the two men engaged in a staring competition of epic proportion where Dick noticed Jason stood quietly by, not inputting anything as if he was waiting on a cue from Kerr.

"Detective, I think you should leave." Kerr was the first to break eye contact, his tone considerably less patient and his smile went with it.

"I don't want to have to tell your supervisors that you've started _harassing_ my son."

"There's no need for that, Mr Kerr. I've got everything I need." Since he was now being threatened, Dick heard his cue to leave. He couldn't get anything from Jason with Kerr standing there, he'd bide his time.

"Have a good day." The detective forced a smile when he stepped around the Kerrs, feeling their eyes on his back as he walked away. That man had something to do with what happened to Roy and Dick would find out what it was.

As the young detective vanished in his car, Jason finally allowed his eyes to sidle to Joker, standing there with a fixed glare after Grayson, stroking the puppy forcefully with hooked fingers. Why did he buy a dog? He always preached they were just a waste of space and provisions.

"Who was he?" Jason asked when he dared to break the aggressive silence. He was desperate not to focus on Speedy, standing by the garden gate and looking sorrowfully after Grayson. There was something the ghoul wanted to say but being dead and lacking a tongue were hard obstacles to overcome. Not to mention the severed vocal cords.

"Just a meddling young man who doesn't know to keep his nose in his own business." He wasn't smiling as he most often did, a testament to how well and truly he was pissed off.

"Oh... Well, can I go hang out with Grant tonight?"

"Jason, you _certainly_ can." Joker went in while he gave the permission, too vexed to say no. Wow, the detective was really giving him a headache, wasn't he? Jason couldn't recall the last time he'd seen the clown this worked up.

"Jason, if you see that detective again tell me." Exhaling, Joker leaned on the kitchen counter with his hands gripping the edges and stared out of the window at the garden, disappearing into darkness the quicker day turned to evening.

Their new dog ran across the floor, sniffing and exploring the unfamiliar house.

"And don't tell him anything but if you can't avoid it, stick to basics; your name is Jason Kerr, you attend Gotham High and your mother died in childbirth, got it?"

Quickly, Jason made a mental note of all of it and nodded obediently.

"Yes, sir." Carefully, he came closer and looked up at the clown, a foot away from him.

"What are you going to do about him?"

"Whatever he makes me do."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *insert witty comment*


	3. The Smiling Clown Emoji

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Tell me, Joker, why do you think I didn't kill Grayson's fiancé instead of Speedy to teach him a lesson about interfering?"
> 
> "Because you're a stuck-up misogynist who thinks women hold no value?" Joker suggested absently while he flicked the cover open and started going through the file, containing sensitive information and some rather incriminating photographs.

Barbara had her face buried in a book when Dick got home, the Scarlet Letter it looked like. She'd read it four times already but he couldn't help but smile at how intently she was captured by its plot as if this was her first time reading it.

"Hey," Dick said, dropping his keys onto the table by the door and shrugging his coat off, hanging it on the rack.

"Dick - _hi_." Her head snapped up from between the pages, blinking rapidly, surprised beyond justification, given there had been noise when he entered.

Detective Grayson found himself smiling again, be it warily. 

"Tough case?" Babs asked when he plunked down beside her on the couch with a yawn, slinging an arm over the back while he loosened his tie with two fingers.

There was no need to worry Barbara over the gruesome details of what Dick was dealing with. She didn't know about his partnership with Roy, this wouldn't make sense to her.

"Nah. Just a routine homicide investigation but your dad's busting my ass over it."

"Oh no. He _still_ hasn't warmed up to us?" Barbara took his hand in hers while she spoke, lacing their fingers and Dick's eye was caught by her ring catching a ray of light.  Engaged. They were _engaged_.

"I don't know what Gordon's problem is, honestly." Was it that Dick was marrying his daughter or that he wanted to investigate his friend's murder? The ice between them was always thin, whatever the case.

"He'll accept you... _eventually_." Babs assured him with a sweet smile as she nuzzled up to him, kissing his neck. A chill of discomfort went through Dick and he straightened, disguising the reaction as yawning and stretching his arms.

"I'm gonna go take a shower, Barb." Dick rose while she regarded him in some confusion, but like everything, she managed to brush it aside.

"Sure. Dinner's in the fridge."

Dick mumbled his thanks while he left for the bathroom, closing the door behind him with a quiet exhale. Dammit. _Fuck_. There was nothing in particular that he was cursing, just everything was so fucking fucked up. Kerr, Jason, and Babs.... _Roy_.

Dick shut his eyes but his brain broadcasted imagery that hurt to remember now that everything went wrong. It wasn't supposed to, he was supposed to protect his partner but because of that fucking argument they had, Dick wasn't there to keep him safe.

What had they even fought about?

_"You're engaged?! Dick, why the hell didn't you tell me?! I can't - I won't do this with you when someone can get hurt."_

Oh yeah. _That_ thing that seemed so nonsensical in the aftermath and was the sole thing that caused Roy to go out on his own, betrayed and too raw from the heat of their argument to have all of his senses about him.

And now he was dead. Beaten, tortured and _dead_.

_"Get your fucking hands off me, Dick. Don't touch me, I'm leaving."_

Why didn't Dick just keep his fingers wrapped around the archer's arm? Just _make_ him stay? _Force_ him. Roy'd be pissed off but he'd be _alive_.

When Dick opened his eyes again, he was staring at the wall through a blur of tears.

The glory of what they were doing, going after the scum everyone else was afraid of, it had faded. It was at Dick's urging that they did any of it so why the fuck didn't Black Mask make _him_ pay for it?

* * *

 

Jason and Grant were like a lot of kids their age in the sense that they had a secret clubhouse in the forest, no adults and no girls allowed. No exceptions.

Night was falling when Jason listened to the lone owl calling from somewhere across the cornfield he walked through. During harvest season, he'd get lost here for sure but the farmer had sown his crop, leaving the earth turned over and muddy but the path was still here, albeit difficult to make out through the gloom. Fallen decaying cobs and stalks of the plant that the farmer had no use for littered the ground, each one a tripping hazard. Jason strained his eyes to see the outlines of them but every so often, Jayakrishna - the oddly named dog Joker bought - would distract him with the strange animal noises she made.

 _She_. It was a girl, by the way.

Jason liked the weight of her leash in his hand and the responsibility of having a dog. He'd always wanted a pet and killing Speedy was definitely worth it for this. Who knew running his throat clean was all Jason had to do?

A very small fee at the end of the day.

Beyond the field - the only ground between Gotham and the forest  
\- the treeline was looming closer and closer, as black as it was foreboding but having the dog with him made him feel safer. The darkness wasn't as scary with Jayakrishna, she had _real_ teeth and claws, unlike the hypothetical ones the night did. 

As expected, Grant was waiting by a tree, hands in his pockets, watching the glowing end of his cigarette draw closer to his lips with each inhale. Nearing, Jason noticed Grant had a new bruise on his jaw, the imprint of his mother's wedding ring pressed into his skin in red marks.

"What pissed her off this time?" Jason asked when they were only meters apart, regarding his friend grimly. He wasn't surprised anymore when this happened, not with how frequent it was.

"Just some unimportant bullshit like usual." Grant's voice was irritated, bitter but Jason noticed the undertow of hurt over those other things. He might act as if he didn't care, but incidents like that with his mother got to Grant. Jason knew they did, his best friend could only lie to himself.

"Where'd you get that dog?" Purposefully steering the subject, Grant gestured to Jayakrishna, wagging her tail so hard her whole body vibrated, beyond herself when he paid her a blink of attention.

"Joker got her as part of an alibi or something." Jason shrugged quite casually since Grant understood. Both of them had experience in their parents and what they would do for waterproof alibis.

"So what did you wanna show me, Grant?" Jason asked when the taller boy took him by the wrist and started leading him into the forest.

"I can't show you unless we're there, can I?" He did have a point, Jason didn't question him even as he was pulled along deeper and deeper through the walls of trees. It was darker under the canopy than out in the open space of the field but Jason felt safe in Jayakrishna's and Grant's company.

From between the sea of thick wooden trunks, there were glimpses of ghostly pale skin, luminous against the black surroundings and the corner of Jason's eye wasn't blind to it during the intermittent seconds that Speedy appeared for.

What the fuck was his problem? Couldn't he just fuck off to the afterlife already? Or at least stay in the basement with the other ghouls and ghosts?

Grant took him to their clubhouse, an abandoned lumberjack's cabin built out of stone and thatch in the early 20th century, right about the time the blueprints for Gotham city were put on the drawing board.

Decrepit was an understating word when half of the roof had collapsed in on itself and the door was blocked by rotting rafter tiers, but the boys went in through a window that was big enough.

Jason had always been curious about this place, its history, who lived here, where did they go, how did they live their life, and when they entered he asked those questions all over again.

"Grant, I've seen our clubhouse before." Jason wasn't sure if it was necessary to remind him but his friend had virtually nothing new here to see.

" _Look_ ," Grant had a broad grin when he reached up the chimney that was crumbling into plaster dust, feeling around until his hand came upon whatever he'd hidden up there. Jason's brows rose when even with the kitchen cloth wrapped around the object, he recognised its distinct L-shape.

" _Where_ did you get a _gun_?" He gaped unintentionally wide as Grant presented it proudly from the folds of cloth.

"Stole it from dad. He's in the joint, he won't miss it." He extended it to Jason and hesitantly, he took it. The weight was unexpected for such a small thing but it was solid iron so Jason supposed it made sense. It was covered in a matte black finish, a 9mm glock with its serial number filed off.  It looked like a movie prop but if Grant took it from his dad, then it was real.

"It's nice....." Jason finally broke himself out of awe to give his thoughts but nice wasn't even a summary of how he already loved this weapon. Carefully, he traced the groove running the length of the barrel and thought about how much more comfortably this filled his hand than a knife. Gun and firearm practice was exclusive to graduation year, up until today he hadn't ever held a gun but he already loved it.

"Cool, right?" Grant's grin had only gotten bigger, husky blue eyes twinkling in delight when Jason was as taken by the glock as he.

"Yeah..." Jason breathed, turning it in his hand until every angle was familiar. God, it was so pretty. How could a lump of metal be this _captivating_?

"Wanna go shoot something?"

"What?"

"We have a gun," Grant shrugged his shoulders, "D'you wanna go shoot something?"

"Won't that make noise?"

"We're in the middle of nowhere, Jaybird." He spread his arms wide apart in emphasis on just how alone they were.

"Who's gonna hear us?" His urging... Jason was aware he should be the smart, responsible one here but the gun hanging from his hand was _itching_ to be used....

* * *

 

 _Bang_! The glock jerked when another bullet left its mouth, dropping the squirrel Grant locked his aim on. The animal's head was blown clean off, falling with a trail of blood that started turning into a puddle when it thudded to the forest floor.

"Wow! Nice shot, man." Excited, Jason congratulated Grant while he gave a small bow, his smile spilling past his face's capacity. Looked like he'd forgotten about that fight with his mom for now.

"Your turn, Jaybird." Grant slapped the weapon into his eagerly awaiting hand, fingers closing quickly around its metal, warmed by Grant's heat.

Quickly, Jason scanned their surrounding grounds for a target and spotted an owl landing on the branches of a birch tree. He wondered if it was the one he heard earlier but didn't stop to think about it, raising his aim and pulling back the trigger. By now, Jason steeled himself for the throwback ahead of time, hardly phased when the gun jolted up with the deafening clap of the bullet launching.

It was a deft shot. The owl was dead the second the bullet penetrated its skull and Jayakrishna started barking excitedly at its corpse when it joined the squirrel's.

"You're getting really good at this, bro."

"It's easier than a knife." Jason admitted, lowering the weapon. "I don't like the way people's eyes look when I bleed them." He glanced at the ghost standing rigidly ten yards away, looking at them in the frozen stare that slipping with the knife caused him to wear. Jason didn't get the first attempt to slit Speedy's throat right, severing his windpipe and he choked on nothing for the ten seconds that it took to reposition the blade and that time, _fortunately_ , was _perfect_.

Still, Jason wondered if it hurt or had the archer gone numb by everything already done to him? Sort of, he hoped Speedy was too delirious off the pain to feel it.  Sadism was a skill Jason was practicing but he couldn't do it yet.

He distinctly recalled Speedy had marks on his back, the sort that came if you were kissed hard enough. Jason had been wondering if his girlfriend was beside herself with grief or if she wanted to murder the person responsible?

"Grant, do you ever... See the people you killed?" Jason was cautious as he asked that, eyes interlocked with Speedy's. He looked sad.

"You mean like _ghosts_?" Grant scoffed, his grin suggesting he thought Jason was messing with him. Jason looked at him, dead serious.

" _Jesus_ ," his fingers carded back through his hair, " _ghosts_? You know there's no such thing, right?"

"I.... Yeah, of course, I know." He pushed a smile over the lie to make it seem more real. He didn't need Grant thinking he was crazy.

"I was just making sure _you_ did."

Grant stared at Jason for a heartbeat, searching for dishonesty but he'd gotten too good at hiding it by now. Then at the snap of invisible fingers, the tension was gone and Grant punched him playfully in the shoulder.

"You're such a fucking weirdo, Jaybird."

Half-heartedly, Jason nodded his agreement and his fake smile persisted. It was both disappointing and relieving in equal parts that Grant didn't see the things he did.

"By the way, I need you to take the gun." Grant distracted Jason by speaking and pushing the weapon into his hand.

"Wait - what? Me? Why?"

"I can't hide it at my place and if we leave it at the clubhouse, it might rust."

"But I-"

"Don't have time to argue, it's almost past your curfew." Grant tapped two fingers on the imaginary clock ticking on his wrist and he wasn't wrong, Joker wanted Jason back home by nine pm sharp.

Sighing unhappily, Jason slid the gun into his backpack.

* * *

 

 _Hmm_. Eleven pm, the perfect time to quit playing this irritating civilian card and get some real work done, as the Joker and not the restrictions that came with being Joseph Kerr.

But before he headed out, Joker went upstairs to make sure that Jason was asleep, like he should be at this time on a school night.

The clown crept quietly along, pushing the boy's bedroom door open just enough to slip in soundlessly, his shadow cast across the wall by the singular lamp on the desk, filling the room with a faint golden glow.

Jason was asleep, slumped over the desk with pens and pencils rolled across its surface, whatever drawing he'd passed out working on trapped beneath him. 

Oh, bless. Joker smiled to himself when he knelt and eased Jason into his arms, lifting him with a small grunt of effort. Thank goodness the boy was rather runty for his age or this would have been notably harder. The second Joker laid Jason on his bed, he reflexively curled up on his side, arms wrapped about himself. The clown pulled a blanket over him and tucked it around his body, momentarily entertaining the idea of getting another cover but then, Jason didn't feel cold so he dismissed it.

Moving over to the desk, Joker examined the sketch in progress, frowning since although the outlines were smudged by Jason leaning on them, it was clear he'd been drawing Speedy the way his body was found. Shaking his head, he gathered up the paper and the others like it, crushing and dropping them into the wastepaper basket. If he got a hold of those, Detective Grayson would have a field day.

Joker would have to tell Jason to quit drawing that dead boy for a while, it was quite incriminating, to say the least.

If it wouldn't add to suspicion, Joker would have shot that nosy detective already like the Romani dog he was. _Fucking gypsies_.... If it wasn't _Jason_ who slaughtered his partner or boyfriend or whatever the detective and the archer were, Joker would have taken drastic action to make this go away but if he did that, it would arise further investigation into him, which would mean the public potentially discovering the school and  that was known only to the underworld of Gotham.

The GCPD, cowardly though they were, would storm the place. Not a lot of coppers wanted a training academy for serial killers in their town.

So Joker would do what he had to in regards to keeping his schedule filler a secret, even if that meant not filling Grayson's brain with lead and marching up to the front door of Gotham City's most feared crime lord, which happens to be what the clown did after he tucked his boy in.

He threw Black Mask's office doors open with both hands, slamming them into the walls with two solid bangs.

"Roman Sionis - you deaf piece of charred leather! Remember when I told you not to involve my pupils in your quarrels with capes?" Joker ditched his custom grin to glare at the man he stormed up to, who regarded him with an indifferent glance up from the paperwork on his desk.

" _Joker_ ," Roman was already vexed, focusing harder on his charts than the murder-happy clown opposite him.

"Still wearing too much purple, I see."

Huffing, Joker swept the damn papers to the floor so they could talk without distraction and he did get that attention he craved, in the form of a glower.

As if he was performing an irritating chore, Roman exhaled when he looked up entirely.

"Let me guess, you're upset that I had your Jason take care of a little problem for me? He's under an apprenticeship here, he does what I say."

Joker's less-than-sane ruby red eyes narrowed on him but he was unphased by what most would take as a warning equivalent to an air raid siren.

"We had an agreement; no capes. Telling Jason to kill that archery boy has brought a cop snooping around where he's not wanted."

"Aha," Roman smiled the best his taut facial flesh allowed him. "You've met Dick Grayson. Nasty thing, isn't he?"

Unamused, Joker's hands found his hips, tightening until his fingers dug holes into his skin. It irked him how easily Roman was playing this off like nothing.

"I can't take any risks in regard to those bluebells finding out about my little establishment and you, _Black Mask_ , have caused a risk. I'll have to pull Jason from your company."

"Jason is part of what you traded in exchange for funding for your twisted school, remember, Joker?" Pushing his chair back, Roman stood and circled the desk, running his hand over its surface as he did. Overconfident, arrogant as always, the taller man stopped at a foot of distance between them and Joker severely disliked how he needed to tip his head back to meet his line of sight.

"Our _agreement_ was that the school's top killer works for you after graduation, that's not my Jason. It's Grant Wilson, Deathstroke's son, then Duela, Harvey Dent's daughter, and then a couple of others before Jason comes in. I'm afraid our boy is falling a little behind." Every part of that, every word, was a complete and utter lie, Jason ranked silver among his peers but Joker wouldn't let Roman know that. No one hustled him.

"Alright then." Roman nodded, taking that as the truth. "I suppose I must honor what we agreed upon.... _but_ I have something that might interest you more than keeping your boy out of my influence."

" _Oh_?" Joker cocked his head to his side. "And what might that be?"

"Let me show you." Roman returned to his desk and pulled a drawer open, selecting the file on top of everything he had in there and handed it to the clown.

"Tell me, Joker, why do you think I didn't kill Grayson's fiancé instead of Speedy to teach him a lesson about interfering?"

"Because you're a stuck-up misogynist who thinks women hold no value?" Joker suggested absently while he flicked the cover open and started going through the file, containing sensitive information and some rather incriminating photographs. His green brows rose as he took them in, processed what the camera caught happening between Grayson and who must be Speedy wearing civvies.

"I had my men do some digging, they discovered not only what Speedy's real name is," Roman went on, grinning when he saw the Joker's surprised reaction.

"... But also what our dear detective's true attachment to him was. Imagine if his fiancé knew."

Silently nodding, Joker could agree that it would be bad for Grayson if his soon-to-be-wife saw the image of him with his tongue down a certain other redhead's throat. Well, well, well, Grayson and Speedy were interacting as civilians in the polaroid, outside of work hours and there was plenty here to convince the detective to mind his own business. Joker did enough research of his own on Grayson to know some interesting details.

"Correct me if I'm wrong, Roman," Joker tore his gaze off the pages, "but isn't Grayson engaged to the commissionaire's daughter?"

"He is." Roman nodded, smirk broadening when Joker drew the same conclusions as him.

"Gordon is a good daddy, he'd fire the bastard who cheated on his baby girl and make sure he never gets police work again. Not to mention the impact on Grayson's reputation, Speedy's secret identity will come out, his engagement will be off... Yes, I think that gypsy bitch will find it's in his best interests to ignore the tragic death of his boy-toy."

"Does that mean we're good?"

Joker nodded, tucking the file beneath his arm with a sure-of-himself grin.

"Jason will report to you after school tomorrow. Have at it, just no more masks, got it?"

"So long as you stop fabricating stories as to who did what at the precinct."

Joker wasn't really sure how Roman knew that but if these pictures had proven anything, it was that Black Mask had eyes in places people didn't know existed. Troubling yet beneficial at times.

"Deal.... You musty-skinned potato."

* * *

 

It hit Dick while he was trying for sleep that night that he knew all the schools in Kerr's district and Jason's uniform didn't match theirs. He leaped out of bed as quietly as he could so as not to wake Barbara, grabbing his laptop and hurrying into the living room where he set it up on the coffee table and soon, he was scrolling through the list of Gotham's schools. Whaddya know, none of them had a coat-of-arms that matched the one he remembered was sewn onto Jason's blazer. It was very similar to Gotham High's but still not the same.

Dick didn't know what that meant yet, only that it was significant to the case he was building.

Next, he was only half-surprised to learn Jason Kerr didn't exist and while his father did, the name Joseph Kerr had only popped into Gotham's database a few years ago with no record anywhere else in the country. An _alias_? Now why would a totally normal civilian like Mr. Kerr need an alias?

Dick was just about to run Kerr's fingerprints through IAFIS, prints he illegally acquired, to find out who this bastard really was but then his phone buzzed with an incoming text message and he paused.

Who the hell was texting him at this hour? Frowning at the unfamiliar number displayed on the screen, Dick unlocked it with a swipe of his finger, clicked on the message and felt like he took a gut punch.

There in his inbox sat a photo of him and Roy during that case in Star City, most memorable for the fact that Dick finally gathered the courage to kiss the archer. The feeling of right had overweighed the wrong but now? Only wrong. Only dread. Who the fuck had this image and how?

There was a message attached to the photo,

_"Forget the investigation into your pretty little Speedy's murder or this image goes straight to Gordon and his daughter. Make the right choice, Roy wouldn't want you to destroy your career over him. And checkmate, detective."_

Slowly, Dick's hand floated back from the enter key that would have revealed what name Kerr was hiding with his fake one, staring with eyes gone wide from shock at his phone.

There was a smiling clown emoji next to the last letter of the word 'detective'.

* * *

 

When Jason woke up early in the morning, before his alarm went off, it was to the pleasant sugary smell of pancakes wafting from downstairs.

Sitting up, he pushed the covers off and was pleasantly surprised to find Jayakrishna curled up by his feet. She thumped her tail when he looked at her, warm brown eyes smiling. He smiled at her too, reaching over to ruffle her ears.

Jason giggled as her tongue licked at his palm.

Getting dressed, he was in a good mood when he went downstairs and equally so when he came into the kitchen, all the way up until a bang he was now familiar with went off the second before wildfire exploded in his upper arm. He screamed and Jayakrishna started barking madly, _protectively_.

Hot blood rushed down Jason's arm, pushing betwixt his fingers no matter how hard he clamped them around the bullet's entry point, clean through the muscle of his bicep.

Blinking back the blur of pain and tears, Jason was facing an angry looking Joker, dangling Grant's dad's gun from one hand while Jason's backpack lay emptied on the table, books and knives scattered carelessly.

"Where the hell did you get a _gun_ from?" Joker demanded, aggressive as he strode over and snatched Jason's chin in his spare hand, forcing the boy's head up. His fingernails dug into Jason's skin but it was the least of his pain. The fire snaking through his bones had him panting and whimpering.

"What if that damn detective caught you with it, _huh_? How would I explain that little treasure trove away?" His hand trembled when it moved down from Jason's face to his throat, tightening like he wanted to squeeze out all the life.

"And guns are _dangerous_ and apparently you needed the reminder." Joker gestured to Jason's bleeding arm, shaking him roughly like a ragdoll to get the point across. Keeping back as many tears as he could, Jason nodded vigorously, rapidly, chewing his lip to bits in the attempt to hold any stupid justifications that would get him in more trouble.  He'd just fuck up further by talking.

"First you ignore everything you've been told not to do and kill Speedy, then you steal a gun from somewhere? _What_ were you going to do with it?" Joker's hand closed until Jason couldn't breathe past it, making it impossible for him to say that he wasn't going to do anything with the gun and that he was just holding onto it for Grant.

"Act out like this one more time and I will _personally_ make sure there's not enough left of you to identify. Got it?" Joker's teeth were grit so hard they were chipping and dizzy as he was, Jason could only nod again.

Then all of a sudden, right before he would have passed out, the pressure around his trachea was gone and he was coughing.

"Now get to school. If you're late, you'll be sorry."

Shakily, Jason went around Joker as quickly as his aching body managed, stumbling but he caught himself on the edge of the table and wrapped his fist around the straps of his bag, dragging it along with him.

Joker was gone from the kitchen by the time the boy turned and lord knows where he went but Jason couldn't bring himself to care, he just needed to get to class and everything would be fine.

Jayakrishna licked up the blood droplets off the kitchen floor but followed Jason outside with almost human concern in her eyes, whining unhappily. Speedy appeared too, standing in front of Jason but the boy ignored him, not that he could have paid much attention to him with how nauseous he felt. Was it normal that walking was getting harder and harder? And his stupid vision was swimming, blurring the sidewalk ahead. It was already hard enough to see with the early morning gloom.

Speedy was in his way again and he spread his arms apart like a barrier then gestured to Jason's arm, mimicking applying pressure to it.

Slowly, Jason blinked at him, confused.

"What? Speedy, you're... N - not making any s - sense." Drowsy, he was only half aware his voice was slurring but the incredulous weight mounting on his shoulders didn't go by as unnoticed. Collapsing onto that pavement was awfully inviting....

* * *

 

Hands wrapped aggressively tightly around the steering wheel, Dick didn't know what he was intending to do when he turned onto Carnival Road but the amount of anger in him made everything seem like the rational choice.

 _Blackmail_. First, that fucker lied about everything he knew and proceeded to _blackmail_ Dick? It had to be him who sent that text and well played, but he wasn't counting on the fact that Dick had already sworn nothing would get in the way of just deserves.

Barbara wouldn't get over it fast and Gordon would fire him without a doubt but making the person who murdered Roy pay made it all worth it.

And Kerr wouldn't be attempting to blackmail him if he truly had nothing to do with it. IAFIS hadn't even found his birth name or a shred of information as to who he really was, just more aliases his fingerprints matched.

Dick's hard set glare and rumble of vengeful thoughts came to the distraction of a small red dot blinking to life on his phone screen but that should be impossible for the simple reason that the dot was the beacon of  Roy's tracking device, destroyed when he was captured.

At first, Dick thought it was a glitch and ignored it but... The location displayed was only ten blocks down from here and stupid cruel hope tugged at him, hope he should not possess when he'd seen Roy's battered corpse with his own eyes. It wasn't him, that was obvious but Dick floored it nonetheless, breaking the speed limit until he was nearly at Kerr's house, too early in the morning for anyone to be out. Anyone except Jason, apparently.

The impossible beacon of the tracker switched off when the kid collapsed and Dick focused less on the mysterious thing that lead him here vanishing than he did on braking and getting out _fast_.

He ran over to Jason, not sure what he was expecting but the blood soaking through the sleeve of his shirt was not it.

Jayakrishna, that dog with the overly complicated name, was yapping at Dick for every meter he got closer.

"Shh, it's alright. I'm not going to hurt him, alright?" The detective wasn't certain if it was a waste of time to try assuring an animal.

"Hey, kid? Jason? Can you hear me?" Dick asked while he rolled Jason onto his back and tried to look past the red matted pavement. He groaned and blinked dully, shaking from the pain of what looked like a bullet wound to his arm. There was too much blood for the shot to have gone clean through the bicep, it had to have hit an artery. Crap.

Forgetting what brought him to this neighborhood initially, Dick slid an arm beneath Jason's knees and another his back, lifting his small body off the ground with more ease than he should be able to with a thirteen-year-old.

There was no sign of that damn Kerr anywhere, who Dick wouldn't put it past to have done this and he pushed that man out of his thoughts to focus in attention on carefully putting Jason into his car, not doing a thing to stop his dog when it jumped in after.

Dick wasn't so into his hunger for revenge that he couldn't prioritize. Kerr would get his later when there wasn't a kid bleeding to death in Dick's car.

And if he believed in ghosts, he might think Roy lead him here. 

He didn't though. Roy was dead and gone and once Dick got his hands free, the killers would be too. Kerr, Black Mask, whoever pulled that knife through Roy's throat, _dead_.

He thought about that while he glanced at the kid, telling himself some people were better off orphaned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tell me, my sweet-faces, do you think Dick would kill the killer if he knew it was Jason?


	4. Run Aground

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "That's not his real name, probably not Jason's dad but yes, Kerr. This is his doing." Dick had no doubt about it. How could he when Kerr blatantly confessed to it in the hall?
> 
> "Dick.... Who the hell did you piss off?"
> 
> "I... I don't know."

 "Grayson, I told you to leave Kerr and his son alone." Gordon hissed into Dick's face, standing at the door of the hospital room the doctors put Jason to rest after they stitched him up.

 "I was driving past the neighborhood," Dick took a calm breath, keeping his composure even with his boss seething enough for heatwaves to come off him.

 "And I found Jason in the street after someone _shot_ him. I took him to the ER, I didn't think I should leave a child to bleed to death, regardless of whose son he is." Dick finished with a glance toward Jason, completely out of it but with the anesthesia, that was to be expected. The doctors didn't use a lot of it but they remarked that Jason's drug tolerance was very low, as if his system was unused to it.

"The place Kerr lives is on the other side of the city from you, he's nowhere near the precinct so what took you near there?"

Should Dick tell Gordon about the tracking device mysteriously turning on and leading him to Jason? Hell no. He still didn't understand what that was but he knew to keep it to himself.

"I was on my way to mine and Barbara's wedding planner who operates in that district, my _fiancé_ asked me to run a new venue by him. Barbara can confirm it."

Gordon glared at Dick when he brought Babs into it, his salt and pepper mustache twitching.

But he dropped that subject there, perhaps realizing he couldn't immediately prove that Dick was lying.

"Has anyone reached Kerr? Does he know his son was shot?"

Oh, Dick bet that bastard knew because who else but he would have done it? Gordon wouldn't take kindly to that suggestion, however.

"No." Dick shook his head once. "No one's reached Kerr, he wasn't at his house but there was blood splatter in the kitchen, the bullet was in the wall."

"So what are we thinking, break in?"

The detective forced it to look like he thought that was plausible but it was _hard_.

"Possibly. We'll have to ask Jason when he wakes up." He tipped his head while he added, "But don't you think it's strange that kid has strangulation marks? The doctors found signs of recent abuse-"

"Whatever you're thinking, quit it, Grayson. Kerr didn't kill Speedy and we don't need you coming up with fake child abuse claims. Those are serious accusations."

" _Fake_? How the hell did I _come up_ with Jason being shot and strangled? _Look_ ," Dick pushed away from the door frame and walked to Jason's bedside, to where Gordon followed with an irritated scoff.

Jason stirred slightly when Dick touched him but remained knocked out when he turned his head carefully, showing Gordon the bruises left behind by whoever had their hands around his neck.

"How is this fake to you?" He gestured to the visible imprints of fingers, crushed into the soft sides of the boy's throat. After that, Dick took it upon himself to reveal the ugly black bruises on Jason's arms that he'd noticed earlier.

Gordon leaned over to inspect them, raising a brow but no real emotion was garnered.

"Kids roughhouse all the time, Dick." He dully replied when he moved back and the detective did his all to hide the eye roll from his superior.

"Kids _strangle_ each other too?" He crossed his arms, staring at the commissionaire intently. In their line of work, it was unfortunately common to come across child abuse cases and they were looking at telltale signs, but Gordon was willing to write them off? At this point, Dick honestly wouldn't be surprised if Kerr had something on the commish as well. For a so-called civilian, Kerr had proven himself dangerous.

"In Gotham they do."

"And the gunshot?"

"Detective Anders is at the house now, she'll let us know what she finds out about that."

"Alright." Dick nodded, gaze downcast in thought. Kori might currently be pissed at him but she didn't let emotion get in the way of work, she'd not entertain an idea as stupid as a break in. What, they were really expected to believe someone broke in, shot Jason, strangled him then let him go, stole _nothing_ and on top of that, no one could find Kerr? Like _hell_ , this was a B&E.

As commissionaire, Gordon didn't have long to spend with them and Dick was secretly happy when something more pressing came up and he fucked off.

Exhaling quietly, hands on his hips, the detective turned back to Jason and was silently surprised that his eyes were open a crack, dull bluey-green staring at something not there. Dick tracked his drowsy gaze to the spot slightly behind him.

* * *

 

' _Trust him_ ' Speedy mouthed, in Jason's face the moment he mustered the strength to bat his eyes open. Confused, Jason frowned when the ghost motioned to the man who didn't know he was standing beside a murder victim.

_Trust him._

Jason had no reason to, especially not since Joker told him not to with this detective. Why was he here? Where were they?

"Hey, kiddo," Detective... _Grayson_? Yes, that was his name. Grayson's voice was calm, reassuring as he came closer a few steps but as unthreatening as he was, Jason pulled himself away. The small bit that he used his arm was enough to remind him with a knife of fire exactly what made him black out to begin with. Painfully white bandaging surrounded his wounded bicep, so tight it almost cut off circulation.

The more awareness he regained, Jason began to realise this sterile white room surrounding him and the thin tube traveling from a drip into his arm. Where was he? The closest comparison to this place that he had ever seen was Professor Pyg's lab at the school and that was a location you did _not_ want to wake up.

"Don't panic, Jay. You're safe, okay?" Grayson must have seen the blatant fear in Jason's eyes when he felt compelled to say that, now standing a meter away with his hands raised the way you did when you wanted to come off as non-menacing.

"Wh - where am I?" Worried, Jason's gaze darted rapidly to his surroundings and lingered on Speedy, looking out of the window at something. The afternoon sunlight shone through the glass, making the archer mostly transparent.

"This is Gotham Central Hospital, Jason. It's safe here." Grayson calmly explained. It was starting to look like this wasn't Pyg's lab and that on its own was enough to relax Jason, albeit a very small amount.

"You remember me?" He asked and Jason gave a small nod.

"Grayson?"

"Friends call me Dick."

A frown formed on the boy's forehead. "Are you sure they're your friends?"

To that, the detective gave a chuckle but he dropped the banter there. 

"Do you remember what happened?"

Jason ran the last things he recalled through his head and slowly, he nodded. Joker shot him with Grant's dad's gun....

"Can you tell me who shot you?"

Jason could, yes, but he wasn't supposed to indulge the detective in anything outside of the basic fake details Joker made him memorize. When the gun was on him, it was bothering Jason that Joker had worn his gloves but not the makeup or purple trench coat that went with his look. It could be argued that he was yet to put his whole gear on but he _never_ started with the gloves, those came last to save them getting stained by greasepaint.

That couldn't be an unimportant detail, minor though it was. Jason had been trained from birth to not only unconditionally trust Joker but also to take any change in his obsessive routines seriously.

From the corner of his eye, he noticed Speedy was writing something onto the misted window with his finger. _Over-analyser_ it said. Could Grayson not see the ghostly scribbles appear on the glass? Well, he wasn't looking in that direction so maybe not.

"Jay, did you hear me?" The detective snapped Jason out of his rapid overthinking when he leaned in a little closer.

"Uh, y - yes," he nodded with a jerk. "I - I don't know who shot me."

"You mean you don't remember anything about the person who had their hands around your throat?" He cocked a skeptical brow and Speedy cast the detective a disapproving look at his more demanding tone of voice. Jason was sure the man knew he was lying.

"It... It was dark."

Grayson sighed softly and Jason flinched when he knelt by the bedside.

"Jay...." His crystalline eyes met Jason's, alight with sincerity. "You can tell me if... if your dad did this." Oh, there was no if about it but Jason would be worse off should he say that. Joker knew what he was doing and Jason just needed to trust him.

"My dad didn't hurt me."

"Jason-"

"Trying to traumatize my son, detective?"

Jason hid the start Joker's appearance at the door gave him but Grayson made no such attempt with the eye roll before he stood and turned around. He actually _huffed_. Jason was confused, were people allowed to do that in the Joker's presence?

"Where the hell have you been, Kerr? Your son was _shot_." Grayson, although bigger and stronger than Joker, couldn't intimidate the clown the way he was standing with his arms folded. Jason wondered if Grayson would be afraid if he knew just what sort of hornet's nest he was kicking. He wasn't scared of Roman so perhaps not. Joker was more dangerous than Roman, however.

"I wasn't in the city last night," Joker calmly began, "And before I left, I dropped Jason off at his friend's house for a sleepover. It was my understanding that was where he was while I was gone. I got home and there were police there, imagine my _surprise_." Joker's eyes picked the detective apart, scary even without the red contact lenses. Or was it the grey that was contact lenses....?

"Where were you?" Grayson's distrust shone as brightly as the star of Nazareth.

"Bludhaven and if you want more details, my lawyer will handle it." Joker detached himself from the conversation, walking over to Jason and finalizing that he had nothing left to say to the detective.

Jason watched Joker take his hand, another thing he so rarely did that the boy took it as an immediate cue to look out for whatever plan of the clown's was in motion. People mistook the Joker for insane and in a lot of ways, he was but more than that, he was meticulous, able to calculate circles around law enforcement. That must be what he was doing.

"Jason, are you alright, lad? Who did this to you?" Jason waited to respond, counting the subtle taps of Joker's ring finger against his palm. One quick tap and four longer ones.

"A man. He was alone." Joker nodded and the next few taps gave Jason the rest of the story he was meant to tell.

"I think he was young. He broke in."

Grayson was looking at them but he couldn't see the communication pass by. He might be smart and a detective and all, but he was a thousand nautical miles behind Joker at this game. People only knew Joker was going to write them out of existing as a problem for him when the noose pulled too taut to breathe against. Jason had watched Joker destroy everyone who ever tried to put their foot in the door.

Grayson was just the newest challenger.

"Well, don't worry about that man anymore," Joker told him, running the back of his hand down Jason's cheek when he moved it.

"The police will make sure he's caught." With the last letter of the sentence, Joker's gaze strayed to Detective Grayson, so deliberate there was no way it was idle. If Jason hadn't thought so before then that confirmed Joker had cards up his sleeves.

"A word, Kerr?" Grayson shifted his stance, arms folded, so agitated that Jason could taste it. That strong emotion scared him because the only times adults got like that were before they did something he didn't want.

Jason was happy when Joker rose and Grayson left with him, taking that scary emotion outside of the room. The path Grayson took to the door, he walked straight through Speedy and the dead archer stared after him then directed his eyes to his hands, trembling by that point.

Watching him, Jason wasn't sure what this feeling was that tugged at him, but it made him nearly wish that slash across Speedy's throat wasn't his doing.

* * *

 

"I know you're the one who sent that picture," Dick growled at Kerr the moment they were out of Jason's sight lock, grabbing the man by his arm and pressing him into the wall.

"What _ever_ do you mean, detective?" Kerr smiled innocently, completely unbothered by Dick's grip on him but maybe that was because there were cops around the corner.

"Blackmailing me won't make me drop this case. Not after what you did to Speedy and that kid."

"What _I_ did to Speedy?" Kerr cocked a brow, tipping his head too knowingly.

"Wasn't it your _involvement_ with him that got that poor boy knocked on the head?"

Gritting his jaw, Dick's eyes narrowed hatefully on Kerr who kept up his facade of an innocent bystander.

"Who the fuck are you?" He hissed, hand around Kerr's thin arm tightening until it shook but Kerr showed no sign of feeling the burn of fingers burrowing into his bicep.

"I told you at the front desk of your department. You're not just a pretty face, detective, read between the lines and you'll get it." Grinning so wide his face might split, Kerr removed Dick's hand and strode around him with all the casual confidence he oozed.

But then he paused, hovering at the entrance to his son's room.

"The only reason I told you that, Grayson, is because you won't be my problem much longer. The extent of what I can do to you doesn't end at a picture. No... That was an instigator, thanks for taking the bait." He gave a wicked smirk over his shoulder before he stepped into the room and shut the door behind him, leaving Dick seething while he clenched and unclenched his fists.

Who. _The hell_. Did Joseph Kerr think he was that he could make such threats? Whoever that was, Dick got the creeping fear that it was more than he bargained for. What did he mean bait? _Instigation_? What the fuck was he planning?

And _read between the lines_? Great, 'cause Dick really wanted more cryptic bullshit.

A thousand questions swam like krill through his head but all came to an abrupt stop with Kori's hand lunging around his arm when she appeared suddenly and started dragging him with her down the hall.

"Kori, what the fuck-"

Purposeful, almost _urgent_ , Kori shoved him into the first supply closet in their path and followed a stumbling Dick Grayson in, shutting the door firmly behind.

"What have you done, Dick?" Kori demanded when he'd barely caught himself against the wall. There were no lights in here but he didn't need them to hear the exigency in her voice. She was between fight and flight mode but _why_?

"Anders, I don't know what you're talking about." Dick calmly replied as he straightened his tie, smoothing down the crinkles her rough handling left behind on his jacket. He tried to stay calm but her behaviour was worrying him. This _wasn't_ how Kori acted.

"Commish ordered me to investigate what happened to that kid you brought in. A couple of blocks from the house, we found the gun the shooter used dumped into a storm drain. We ran the fingerprints; they're _yours_."

"Wh - what?" Dick nearly choked. "Kori, I did _not_ shoot that kid!"

" _I_ know that but you've been told to leave that family alone, you didn't listen, you _happened_ to be on Carnival Road when the Kerr kid was shot and your fingerprints were on the weapon. I don't need to tell you how _bad_ that looks." Her bright green eyes were as wide as they could go, glistening with worry for him.

Dick felt an invisible noose tightening around his throat, squeezing until it took every ounce of concentration in him just to remember how to breathe. _This_ is what Kerr meant. He had threatened he could run Dick into the ground and - did he _shoot_ Jason just to frame Dick for it? Could anyone be _that_ sick?

"How many people have seen the fingerprint results off the gun?" Dick demanded when he could gather the strength to lift his head from his hands.

"Just me and the techie down at the precinct. I've managed to keep it secret but it won't be for long." She gave an exasperated sigh, glancing elsewhere for a moment.

"Dick, how did someone even _steal_ your prints?"

Briefly, Dick thought back to how easily he'd acquired Kerr's and with the same lack of effort, the man could have done the same during any number of interaction they'd had. Damn sneaky bastard.

"I don't know when Kerr did it-"

"Wait - _Kerr_? As in the shot kid's dad?" Kori all but gaped at that point, lips parted in disbelief.

"That's not his real name, probably not Jason's dad but yes, _Kerr_. This is his doing." Dick had no doubt about it. How could he when Kerr blatantly confessed to it in the hall?

"Dick.... _Who_ the hell did you piss off?"

"I... I don't know."

* * *

 

Leaning his head on the cold car window, Jason dully watched Joker exchange a few words with an old man who had a police badge on his belt. Maybe he was the chief? That was a cool job he half-heartedly thought to himself.

His arm still throbbed but the pain became tolerable with all of that medicine the doctors who said he could go home gave him. It made him tired, though. _Very_ tired. Jason thought he could fall asleep at any moment if Joker hadn't come in at that moment and shut the door with a bang that shook the car to its core.

With a start, Jason was alert again, eyes questioning Joker since he didn't know exactly why any of this happened. And... Would it happen again? Jason hoped not, he didn't like getting shot very much.

Taking a slow inhale, Joker turned to him and he didn't look angry. Still, Jason pressed himself back into the seat, silently catching his breath.

"That detective is taken care of now, I let Commissionaire Gordon know what you said in the hospital room about the man and it won't be long until everything is connected to Grayson." Joker grinned while he started the car with a twist of the keys in the ignition, pulling out of the parking lot in a U that Jason was sure was actually a big smile.

"Are.... Are you really mad at me?" Cautiously, Jason asked. "About the gun?"

"Oh, I'm _livid_ with you, boy." Joker casually let him know, focused on watching the road while he spoke. He was smiling, regardless of what he said.

"But you made up for it by being a good little pup and lying so nicely." Jason winced when he was patted on the head rather boorishly. Every movement from the clown made him flinch prematurely for pain that didn't come.

"What's gonna happen to Grayson?"

"He'll be fired if not arrested, his engagement will be off - I'll make _sure_ of it. Everyone will know _everything_ that went on between him and that archery boy, not to mention Speedy's pesky real name will be public news by the time I'm done. Our dear Riddler's already down at the precinct giving false eye-witness accounts of Grayson breaking and entering and Harvey's an A-class lawyer, _luckily_ he's on our side. Oh, it's so _nice_ to have friends!" Joker laughed to himself and then he went on,

"You see, Jason, there's more ways than one to put someone six feet below. Running Grayson into the ground like this will teach people to not ask questions where they're not wanted."

"Oh." Shifting his gaze back to the window, Jason watched the dirty Gotham scenery as it went quickly by, a strange sense of numbness settling over him. So that was that. Nothing was going to change.

"You said everyone will know what Speedy's identity is.... What was his name, Joker?"

The clown glanced at him, silently questioning why Jason cared at all but he gave a nonchalant shrug, seeing no harm in telling.

"Roy Harper."

Swallowing was almost painful after Jason repeated the name in his head, watching from the rearview mirror as Speedy - no, _Roy_ , sat in the backseats, his sights locked on the boy intently through a hazy veil of death.

Jason hadn't realized it before but Speedy _had_ a name. He was a person who'd had a life, a family and people who he meant something to.

He'd been _alive_.

For the briefest moment, Jason blinked back something that burned in his eyes when he thought about it. Maybe it was because Roy followed him around that made him think about him more than the others.

Because there _were_ others. Tens or hundreds of them. Roy was only the most recent, nothing else.

* * *

 

There had to be a way to prove every word from Kerr's mouth was a lie. There was one and Dick would find it but disproving all the fake evidence stacked high against him? Well, that would be a little harder.

Kori might be able to get the fingerprints on the gun passed as contaminated evidence which would help only for now, it wouldn't be long until Jason's lies were pinned onto him or Kerr pulled another something like this. Best case scenario, Dick would be fired, something he could tell Gordon was already _itching_ to do. Jesus, why were him and Kerr BFFS anyway?

Strangling the wheel as if it owed him money, Dick ground his teeth, holding the hospital parking lot in a set captive glare. He had a feeling that even if he backed off now, Kerr wouldn't do the same. No, at some point, this became less about keeping himself free of all consequences and more of a game.

 _A game,_ Dick scoffed. _Kids_ played games and somehow he was trapped in twisted rounds of 'catch me if you can'. And all this because he couldn't stay committed to Babs. It's not like he _wanted_ to have his breath be taken away by the archer from Star City who washed up in Gotham one dark day, the ray of light the detective never knew he so badly needed.

Next to the thick cloud of debauchery hanging over the city, Roy's carefree, happy-go-lucky nature was all Dick ever needed. He never told Roy about his engagement, it was his secret until it no longer was so in a sense, he stabbed both the redheads in his life in the back. And then he left the knife there for someone else to run Roy through with.

"I'm so _sorry_..." Dick mumbled, voice strained by the tears he hadn't realise he'd been holding. He wished his words meant something. He wanted Roy to know he was sorry for lying, letting him go and getting him killed.

" _Ruff_!"

Dick jumped out of his skin when Jason's dog barked at him from the back seats, wagging its tail in a blur with brown eyes smiling brightly at him. She barked again.

"Ruff!"

He'd completely forgotten he still had that fucking thing in the car.

Dick exhaled loudly when the fright passed, muscles relaxing without his sayso. His stumbling heartbeat slowed when he realised it was just the friendly dog Kerr had supposedly owned for more than a week.

Suppose he had to return that animal - whose name he couldn't remember - since while his feud with Kerr was fire and brimstone, Jason was innocent in this. His dog seemed to mean a lot to him.

Idly, Dick watched the dog as it snuffled about, sniffing the seats, an invisible trail of scent leading her to Jason's backpack, also still here, thrown open carelessly.

Another thing the detective needed to return like a model citizen.

Jaya- _something_ stuffed her head in through the opening of the bag and Dick reached over to stop her - when she pulled out a _knife holster_ , the sort that fitted onto the shoulder.

A confused frown creasing his forehead, Dick took it in his hand for a moment before he pulled it out its sheath, eyes widening when he took in the wickedly serrated edge. A buck knife with a fixed _serrated_ blade, just like the one the coroner said was used to....

Dick dropped the dagger as if it burned him, in the same movement grabbing the bag and roughly shaking its contents out. More knives and books tumbled free but these were _not_ your typical school books, one of them was called Massacres And Mass Murders.

Dick didn't read the titles though, not when the sketchpad that fell open was more eye-catching. As fate would have it, the good detective was staring at a graphically drawn picture of Roy, strung up dead to the GCPD's door. It choked him to see it again but the mental pain didn't distract from the fact that in this interpretation, the note that had been stapled to Roy's chest had writing on it.

 _"Interfere with my operations, Grayson, and your stuff gets broken._ "

It had never been released to the public what that message said.

It was with grim earth-shaking clarity that realization began to dawn on Dick. His breath quivered when he read what Jason had written on the other side of the page.

_"This boy is called Speedy, he's about nineteen-years-old,"_

Roy _wasn't_. He was twenty-three just with the amount of smiling and laughing he did, most people mistook him for far younger.

".... _And he and his friend, a detective, have made problems for Mr. Sionis. It was a show kill, to teach the detective to mind his own business. I'm not sure if it worked but it was good practice. I still need to work on cutting throats, though. I slipped with Speedy and it took me a second to get it right. I keep wondering if it hurt...."_

With a jerk, Dick wrenched the glove compartment open, snatching Roy's case file from inside. He thumbed through the pages flicker-fast until he came upon _that_ note in a clear plastic pocket. Dark stains of old blood budded through the formerly white paper but it didn't obscure the text or the handwriting, that when compared to Jason's memos was an _identical_ match.

Dick's hands trembled when he stared at the papers side by side, when the dots that had always been there finally connected. The coroner said that the angle at which Roy's throat was cut and the lag behind the action suggested his killer was significantly weaker than him. Kerr wasn't a big man but Roy wasn't that much stronger than him.

That didn't ring true in Jason's case. He was a _child_ , it was to be expected if he struggled to slit a grown man's throat.

With the mystery coat-of-arms on Jason's blazer, those twisted textbooks, the knives and - well, basically all of this shit, Dick wasn't sure what he was looking at but he had a feeling Roy's murder was only the tip of the iceberg. He was breathless just trying to imagine what could lurk beneath.

Something urged Dick to investigate the sketchbook further and there was no shortage of gruesome pictures done with pencil, some of which he was connecting to cold cases dotted around the city. That thirteen-year-old boy whose life he saved was a goddamn _serial killer_. 

Only one drawing didn't depict the aftermath of a horrendous crime but somehow, it was more unsettling than the ones that did.  Who wouldn't recognise the clown portrait as Gotham's resident terrorist, _the_ _Joker_? God knows why Jason sketched this monster, staring out of the sketchbook at Dick with such an air of familiarity....

That's when the horrifying reality clicked and not for the first time that sitting. _Read between the lines.... I told you who I was at the front desk...._

Joseph Kerr. Joe Kerr. _Joker_.

Holy shit.

That bastard had been taunting them from the very beginning. The whole department. He never even _tried_ to hide it, not the distinct hair colour or the smile of scars Joker was famous for. How the fuck had Dick been blind to this?

Gordon wouldn't believe what Dick barely could, Kori swallowed that someone was framing him just about, and with his ride-or-die partner having done the latter, Detective Grayson was in this one without backup.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And this, kids, is why we don't irritate the clown prince of crime. A new question for ya'll, do you think Joker cares about Jason at all?


	5. Well, One Of Us Will Die

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You realize one of us is going to die, don't you, detective?" Joker playfully cocked his head when he went on, the elongated painted smile over his scars reaching his eyes.
> 
> "You or me, I wonder?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *evil snigger that confirms your impending sense of dread is correct*

_"Oh, what the hell is that?" Joker sighed in exasperation, briskly motioning to the humanoid creature bent over in its small cage, banging its head into the bars in a slow but constant thump-thump-thump, long strands of dry black hair swaying to the movement. Whatever it was, grey skin and bones sticking sharply from beneath it, it was making low pained moans. How long had the professor had it in the school's basement?_

_Pyg stared at Joker, blinking stupidly in the surprise of the clown not being all that impressed with the latest abomination he wanted to show off. Joker might be more taken if he hadn't been up for five nights in a row with a teething one-year-old child, said child was now sucking on his tiny fist and giving Pyg's creature confused big eyes._

_Exhaling underneath his breath, Joker stroked Jason's fine black hair, his hand fitting perfectly around his small head. Jason's weight, little as it was, was really doing a number on Joker's back to carry him around in a sling all day. Oh, JayJay_ _being able to walk couldn't come soon enough._

_"Wherever you dragged that thing from, Pyg," Joker gestured again to the creature. "Take it back. I've made it quite clear I don't want these monsters in my school."_

_"Next to the monsters you're already bringing up here, my Ara is nothing." Pyg finally broke out of the state of shock, the name coming off his lips a familiar sounding one but Joker wasn't sure where he'd heard It._

_"You see, Joker, Ara was one of your pupils before she fell behind in her studies...."_

_Aha. Now he remembered the quiet girl from the back of class, also he remembered the knife his top student drove through her heart. She didn't look as dead as last time._

_It was very slowly that the Joker pinched the bridge of his nose when he saw what the professor had done._

_"Haven't I told you to stop meddling with this resurrection nonsense? I don't want it in my school."_

_"You're not even slightly interested in where this can be taken?" Pyg cocked his head, persistently holding onto that crumb of the belief that the clown cared at all about this tomfoolery._

_"Not even slightly, professor. That girl in there, whatever you've done to her clearly hasn't left her right in the head." As if to purposefully prove his point, Ara began shrieking animalistically all of a sudden and the pound of her head on the bars turned to violent slams. Blood erupted from her forehead, matting her hair, the pitch of her tormented wails frightening Jason. He cried, shuddering and pushing into the Joker's chest, tears spilling down his little cheeks dampening the clown's dress shirt where Jason turned to hide his face against._

_"And now your damn monster has upset my munchkin." Irritated, Joker scoffed loudly when he tended to the fussing baby, pulling his gloves off by the fingers since he'd learned that skin-on-skin contact was comforting to Jason. Carefully, the back of his hand traced the length of the baby's smooth cheek, back and forth while he made soft shushing noises._

_"Shh. Calm down, pumpkin, that nasty thing of uncle Pyg's is locked up nice and tight, na? Completely locked up and - professor, tranq that damn thing." Joker snapped the order with bite to his words, a tone his sweet little darling should not be exposed to at this delicate tender age._

_With a nod, Pyg acted obediently and snatched the ready dart gun off his barely-fitting belt, firing a shot or two into the howling creature, the drug potent enough to take effect almost at once. Pained shrieks became low groans then muffled whines until nothing. Ara's bony greying body slumped against the bars that held her, so many things wrong with the sight of her that Joker didn't know where to begin naming them._

_Instead of focusing on that, the clown turned on his heel and headed out, simultaneously shushing Jason's miserable cries while he left parting instructions over his shoulder,_

_"Kill that thing, Pyg, and I don't want to hear about this again."_

* * *

 

Humming REM's 'Shiny Happy People' to himself, Joker took a step back to examine the plastic lining the living room walls and made sure it was all nice and covered up in here, wouldn't want to mess up the furniture, now would he? Furniture was expensive.

Quite deliberately, he'd pushed that smarty pants detective to the point where any man would make a drastic, rash decision. Joker saw two outcomes to his little game here; Grayson would tread water as best as he could with the lawsuits and charges on the horizon, or alternatively, he decided to try what Joker was hoping for. A detective on the brink of ruin? No one would find it odd if he just dropped off the grid....

Thin sheets of clear plastic had taken over every inch of the living room in anticipation.

There was a skip to his step when the clown danced into the kitchen to take the muffins out of the oven. They were blueberry, just perfect, golden brown and soft and fluffy. He felt Jason watching him cautiously from the table, shifting his hands around a glass of orange juice. He wouldn't drink the stuff of his own free will but Joker was adamant that the boy got his daily dose of vitamin C and all the right nutrients for a growing teen such as himself.

"Eat your breakfast." Joker reminded him while he put the tray of muffins on the cool stove top. He was very in tune to Jason's hesitancy to have his breakfast, just some simple scrambled eggs which he liked. Normally, that is. His food was untouched and his juice barely sipped at, sitting on the table in front of him.

"Not hungry." Mumbling, Jason was dully gazing out of the window at the clear blue sky with no clouds at all, a truly brilliant morning but the blinding sunlight only made it more apparent that he was looking a little pale.

"Are you getting sick?" With the question, Joker pressed his palm onto Jason's forehead, warm with a cold sweat. He was definitely coming down with something. Slowly, Jason blinked up at him, eyes slightly misted by his currently poor health. And this is why Joker didn't like hospitals, you got all sorts of mystery ailments there.

"I'm fine." Groggy, Jason brushed his hand aside, chair scraping back when he rose.

"I'm gonna go see if my bag's upstairs." Yes, that had been missing since yesterday and Jason needed it for school, he had to find it but he wouldn't be getting much work done today.

"Oh, no you don't, young sir." Joker caught his arm when he tried to pass, tugging him back and he was trained well enough to not resist.

"You're running a temperature, overexert your system and you'll give yourself a fever. No school today." Holding Jason by his shoulders firmly, the clown guided him back to the table, sitting him down.

"Drink your juice. The vitamin C will help you get better."

Nodding feebly, Jason raised the glass to his lips and took a reluctant little sip. He swallowed so stiffly one might think it hurt.

While he struggled the juice down, Joker went about changing the bandages and dressings around Jason's arm, giving the neat stitch work an approving look. The bullet hadn't left a very visible mark and that was good, Roman always had complaints to voice when Jason came over with bruises or cuts. Sure, a murderous crime lord truly cared if Jason was hurt.

Gauze changed, Joker trashed the old dressings and got the knife sharpener from the top drawer, setting it on the counter beside the rows of daggers that needed some work.

A little time went by and Jason was curled up in the corner of the couch, tiredly watching an old episode of National Geographic, wondering if the Egyptologists were claustrophobic in that burial chamber they climbed into. It looked really hot in there. Egyptian royals were awfully dramatic with their huge graves and temples and monuments. They were supposed to help guide deceased souls to the afterlife or something. Maybe Jason should build Roy a pyramid to get rid of him? He was standing there in the corner again, just.... Well, he wasn't doing anything aside from staring into space. It was quite distracting the way the stench of blood filled the air around him and Jason tried to focus more on the show or Joker walking around, idly cleaning random things that were slightly out of place.

He was bordering on impatient.

"What are you waiting for?" Jason asked, straightening a bit.

"Just a guest." Absently explaining, Joker checked the mantlepiece for dust, running a finger along it but it wasn't dirty in the least. He was visibly disappointed. Jason knew to be on his toes when Joker was bored. One monumental occasion involved some not-so-nice people, a jogger, a video camera and the basement.

Joker's boredom lead to Jason learning what a snuff film was at the ripe age of three.

With an exasperated huff, the clown slumped down onto the other end of the couch, capturing the ceiling in a stare of logic-defying intensity. The greasepaint made his frown seem unnatural when he so often smiled while wearing it. Joker never wore the makeup in the house, always applying it on the drive to school or at school itself.

He said that work didn't belong in the home so neither did the paint and purple suit.

Jason watched him pay no attention to anything going on around him, not dissociated but definitely focusing harder on something other than reality.

"Jayakrishna is missing," Jason quietly interjected, trying his luck with the subject. The sudden intrusion of his voice entering Joker's rapid thinking gave the clown a start back into the real world.

"What?" His frown got deeper, green brows knitting. "The dog?"

Meekly, Jason nodded. Did Joker already forget about her? Well, he didn't really have a long attention span for things he wasn't invested in.

"I think she ran away after... After you..." Subconsciously, Jason's hand ghosted to and tightened over his upper arm, held tight by the fresh gauze.

"Oh.... Uhm, I'll get you a new dog if it doesn't come home."

"But I liked her." He didn't quite mean to whine aloud but definitely in silence. He didn't want a replacement. He wanted Jayakrishna and not some new dog.

"I'll go ask the neighbors if they've seen her later-"

"Can I come?"

"No. You're sick." The look he was given was a serious one, as if what he said was as severe and important as all the things the Joker filled his days with.

Being denied, Jason kept the disappointed sigh to himself, trapped in his chest, but took some comfort in the fact that the neighbors liked Joker and would help him find Jayakrishna. The neighbors were so deep in deceit that they thought they were living next door to normal nice people you could have cook-overs with. They did some summers but Jason didn't like the other kids and Joker had a compulsive urge to _accidentally_ burn people with grills and hot food. He did that because he was bored.

Jason made it a point to protest to social events because it motivated Joker to avoid them altogether. Joker hated them but for whatever reason, every now and again indulged. Last summer, he discreetly dropped a cell phone into the hot tub the neighbors teen girls were playing in at an event, killing all five of them. The parents were heartbroken but thought nothing of it but a terrible accident. Teenagers were always on their phones, weren't they? It could have happened to anyone.

Soon enough, Joker went to get something from upstairs and with the show ended, Jason finally paid attention to Roy. He was pacing restlessly, fidgeting with his hands, rubbing his palms together, swaying every now and again since his severed neck didn't provide quite enough support for his head to withstand those fast turns he took.

Jason wondered if his head could actually fall off if his spine broke... No, nothing could cause him damage now that he was dead. But he wasn't this worked up over nothing.

"What's wrong with you?" The boy asked, keeping his voice low so the Joker didn't overhear him talking to himself and get curious.

Roy couldn't answer, obviously, but the way his gaze locked hard on Jason sent a shiver down to his marrow. The sort of chill you got when something was amiss.

And then there was a sound at the door.

Knock. Knock.

* * *

 

The gun was concealed by his jacket, snugly tucked away into his holster but Dick so wanted to pull it out and blow the Joker straight back to hell. Such an evil thing couldn't be allowed to carry on living. Even if he didn't kill Roy, he'd done plenty to make this justified. Not only hundreds of deaths but Joker ruined everything, Dick's career, his relationships and his whole life, teetering dangerously over the cliff to total destruction. And it would fall.

Clownface deserved a bullet for his efforts.

If it was the last thing Dick did as a detective, he would put away the dirt who accurately nicknamed himself cur. Kerr. Joker. Whatever. He was dead meat. And that evil fucking child.... No. It couldn't be of his own volition that Jason killed Roy. Joker must have somehow forced him to since Dick couldn't believe someone so young possessed that ability naturally.

Still, he hated that fucking kid. Dick wouldn't kill him but couldn't look past what Jason's actions had cost him.

And then that little mind-controlled monster opened the door Dick tapped his knuckles on, bluey-green eyes confused when they looked up at him.

"Detective Grayson?" Oh, so good at playing innocent. Dick almost felt bad for how roughly he shoved the door open and part of it hit Jason in the shoulder, except he didn't get to make a noise of pain before Dick let himself in, shut the door, locked it and held Jason against the wall by a fistful of his shirt.

Understandably afraid, Jason whimpered when Dick shoved the cold muzzle of the gun into his middle, never intending to pull the trigger but still he threatened the kid with it. Why? Because he was enraged this stupid thing playing with sharp objects cost him someone he loved.

"I know what you did, you fucking devil child," Dick hissed, pushing the gun harder into his abdomen until Jason winced.

"Was it hard to cut his throat?"

A horrified expression came upon Jason when he realized Dick knew exactly which bodies had turned to skeletons in his closet.

"I - I-" Jason didn't have a single justification he could voice before a knife careered through the air, sinking into the wall beside Dick and causing his attention to snap away from the boy and to the staircase. Smiling, Joker all but skipped down the steps, another knife held by the tip between his index and thumb.

"Detective!" The demented clown sang when he jumped the last stair, his disturbed happy eyes meeting the detective's angry blue ones. Nice that he'd gotten all dressed up and put his makeup on. He'd counted on Dick figuring it out and coming here.

"It's rude to be late, you know."

Glaring daggers sharper than the one Joker held, Dick dropped Jason, pushed away from him and met the clown half-way across the room.

"Happy now, Joker?" Dick spat, another surge of hatred spiking in him.

"Happy you've ruined my life?"

Joker shrugged casually. "Well, I mean, I couldn't have done it without you.... I had nothing to do with your darling Roy's death, by the way. That was all my little JayJay showing some initiative." His painted red lips formed a fond smile to the boy, motioning for him to come over and carefully, Jason did. He took a wide berth between himself and Dick, circling to Joker. He was like a frightened animal the way he moved with so much caution.

Dick's eyes tracked him but his gun didn't. He didn't kill kids, no matter what Jason did.

"You realize one of us is going to die, don't you, detective?" Joker playfully cocked his head when he went on, the elongated painted smile over his scars reaching his eyes.

"You or me, I wonder?"

" _You_." There was no doubt about it. Dick was killing this bastard, not only because his games had a crippling impact on his life but also... ever since he was a teenager, he'd been hearing about the sick things this man did and he could finally end it.

Joker spread his arms apart in an invitation to his chest, so confident that one could be sure he had the upper hand and a fistful of cards to play, but Dick didn't care. His vengeful anger didn't allow for him to care.

"Have at it then, detective. I bet you'll take twenty-to-life to watch me die..."

"Gladly." His jaw grit. Gordon would make him face repercussions for murder, no mind that it was a sadistic lunatic he put down. From the corner of his sight, he noticed Jason's distressed gaze darting to and fro between Joker and Dick. He was no stranger to death, he could take this.

Joker grinned when he saw the detective's mind was made up.

Dick trained his gun on _Joker_ , he fired at _Joker_ , only in a blur of motion and color, Jason moved to shove that damn clown out of the way. Oh, _why_ did he do that? _Why_?! Dick's eyes shot wide when the kid's head whipped back with the force of the bullet slamming into it, filling the room with the stench of burnt gun powder and blood.

With a horrified 'no!' and his heart exploding in his throat, Dick dropped his weapon the second Jason collapsed, there to catch him before his body hit the floor.

" _No_ , no - _no_! C'mon, kid, _please_ don't fucking die." Desperate, pathetic, Dick begged as he violently shook Jason by his shoulders but he was already going limp, eyes rolled all the way back, a dark red circle on his forehead where the lead passed through. Oxygenated blood gurgled past his teeth but there was no breath coming with it, not when the boy was dead the second the bullet penetrated his skull.

Dead. _Dead_ \- Dick just killed someone. And not just anyone, a _child_. That notion didn't fully register. Drops of spit flew past his lips with every ragged too-quick breath he sucked in, vision swimming in disbelief as his fingernails sunk into Jason's skin, it was so warm....

Silent, Joker stood by, staring at him while the detective's reality darkened and twisted. His alarm-red eyes did nothing but hover over the dead boy and the halo of red growing around his head.

Glancing at the clown, Dick desperately searched him for any sign of emotion, a hint of humanity. A green brow arched at him and the ever-present crimson grin grew back, momentarily gone.

"That was an unfortunate misfire." Smirking, he remarked but Dick saw to something past that murder-happy clown he knew, flickering almost out of sight. Displeasure.... Maybe more.

"I - I didn't mean to - I'm so sorry-" Dick hopelessly stammered, hugging Jason's small body to his own shaking self, so tight he wouldn't be able to breathe if he was alive. He didn't mean to do this. He didn't want to do this! He never came here for - for _this_.

"Kid, _please_..." The unraveling detective whimpered, shaking Jason again, a little lighter, and his only reply was the drip-drip-dropping of beads of blood falling to the floor.

Judging by his extreme reaction, darling Grayson hadn't taken a life before. He hadn't taken a life... Why not start with someone as small and helpless as a field mouse? Joker's wide grin persisted even while he ground his teeth, bending to pick up the fallen and forgotten gun. The barrel was smoking, hot from the lead it spat....

Guns were dangerous. Joker _distinctly_ said they weren't safe. No one listened.

Grayson was too mortified with himself to hear Joker's approaching steps or the click of metal on metal, safety rolling back. He circled the kneeling detective, slumped around Jason, shaking through rampant emotions he had no control over.

"I suppose you think that's fair, don't you?" Joker asked, terse, lowering himself into a crouch opposite Grayson, waving the weapon.

"Jason killed your Roy, so you kill him? I mean, an eye for an eye is an age-old rule but _geez_." He tipped his head with the statement, struggling to maintain his grin as broadly as came naturally. He felt... Like someone had stolen something from him. Actually, that's exactly what Grayson did, took away the perfect protege he'd been training since he found it, discarded and unwanted. The perfect little.... Something.

"I - didn't mean t - to-" Grayson shuddered and Joker was privy to a rare glimpse of just how young his dear opponent was. So young and so misguided....

So damn deceitful. Joker had thought he didn't have the balls to fire his weapon at a living little thing like Jason.

"Oh hush now." Coaxingly, Joker pressed a gloved finger over his trembling lips. "I know you didn't mean to blow a child's brains out onto the wall... But that's what happened, isn't it?"

It was pitiful how horrified Grayson was, eyes wide and diluted, half catatonic, unable to keep violent tremors from rattling through his bones.

"I'm sure Gordon will understand," the clown went on, "that you meant to kill me and Jason just got in the way. Always interfering that one." Fondly, Joker smiled at Jason's lifeless form, reaching out and easing the boy's body from Grayson, who put no effort into holding onto him. How sad.

Quite gently indeed, Joker adjusted his grip on Jason, pulling him onto his lap and carefully brushing back strands of his matted black hair. Aww, was anything as _precious_ as a sleeping child?

"You know, he's fourteen next month. Such a sweet and innocent age, isn't it?" His words were weapons right now, anything he said could be lethal, he knew for sure. Detective Grayson flinched when he heard that, something he already knew but Joker wanted it to _sink in._

The clown was wearing a kevlar vest under his suit, if the bullet went into his face then tough luck, y'know? It was _meant_ to hit _him_. Jason being shot wasn't part of the game. His munchkin dead wasn't in the rulebook.

Carefully, Joker gathered Jason up, lifting him so gently and easily because he was so damn small. Without a word to Grayson, who didn't even look up, Joker headed to the door, at the front step when he paused. Over his shoulder, he glared at the good detective.

"I'll let you crawl home and think about what you've done. I'll give you a moment but we are not done. People don't steal from me." Grayson heard but he didn't respond, just stayed staring at the floor through his blurry eyes. His state of shock would give all the time Joker needed to get to who could help rectify this. It was so wrong. Not planned.

Pulling his gloves off between his teeth, Joker spat them viciously onto the lawn and when he caressed Jason's face with the back of his hand, he wasn't smiling.

"Shh. Don't cry, pumpkin. Daddy'll handle this." He assured in a low voice while the warmth of Jason's blood seeped into him.

"Joseph!" One of the neighbors came running out, looking all troubled and worried until they hit the visual brick wall he was. The _Joker_ , carrying a dead child.

The clown pulled out Grayson's gun and shot the interfering busybody in the head. _Square_. He didn't have time for the people he barely stomached on a basis.

He loaded Jason into the passenger seat, making sure he had his belt on because safety first. And then he got in himself, yanking the keys harder than need be.

The Joker wasn't happy. He didn't even burst into mad laughter as he shot the neighbor's wife and teen son when they came to investigate the gunshots. Bang. Bang. Both dead like their daddy.

Those caring conservative neighbors laying lifeless on the lawn must have called the police; sirens screamed in the distance. Grayson would have a lot to explain Joker determined while he drove.

Every meter of the way, he kept thinking that Jason's head was in line with his chest. Grayson aimed at his _chest_ and the bullet could have been totally harmless.

"Why do you gotta meddle, lad?" Joker sighed with the glance he sent Jason. It was almost forgettable that he wasn't alive when he was always so silent in the car. And in general. Joker raised him well, into such a quiet and obedient boy.

Grayson wasn't going to ruin that. No one was.

* * *

 

He was so deep in shock, Dick wasn't even aware of it when Roy stepped around the blood stains and knelt by him. He tried to put his hand onto his shoulder but dammit, it just passed through. Frustrated, the archer bit his lip hard enough for it to hurt if he'd not been so completely fucking dead.

How does he make someone see him? There was no manual for this shit. Jason saw him, he didn't know why or how but he needed Dick to do that.

Christ, he could already hear sirens. It was the worst outcome imaginable what happened but his partner needed to snap the fuck out of this. Nowish would be nice.

Earlier with the tracking device, Roy had been able to interact with it and switch it on to lead Dick to the wounded little murderer, maybe.....

He didn't waste time in digging the tracker out from his belt, even though Black Mask's men broke it when they captured him ( _ghost tracker_?) and quickly turned it on. He heard the beep of it activating on Dick too, giving the detective enough of an alert to draw him from this state a bit.

Frowning, Dick stared at the location displayed on the screen of his phone, right _here_ , and he glanced around in confusion that was just but not time appropriate.

Rising, Roy walked fast to the backdoor, straight through it (the few and far apart perks of being dead) and he headed toward the treeline surrounding the Joker's house. He was so fucking relieved that Dick followed the tracker, albeit cautiously. Skeptically. He wasn't right in the head enough to question things like that brilliant detective mind of his always made him.

When Roy's bite-sized killer had been out in the woods shooting things with Deathstroke's lunatic son, the archer remembered how he felt out there. More... Physical, less like a transparent ghosty thing or whatever the fuck he was. Once, to pass the time on a boring bus ride from Star to Gotham, he read somewhere that electrical fields in cities and towns made it hard for ghosts to manifest. Something about fucking with transmission or frequency.

Anyway, he lead Dick deeper into the forest, away from those sirens and that murder house, where he again started to feel his particles collecting into a more physical state of being. The further from civilization they got, the less dead he felt.

He stopped when he heard the gasp from behind him and guessed he must be strong enough to be somewhat visible. He pulled the collar of his shirt to cover his slit throat before he turned.

"R - _Roy_?" Dick's voice quivered, scared, confused eyes drilling holes into the archer. He wasn't sure how this manifestation shit worked but his partner could definitely see him.

 

Roy didn't know if it was an appropriate thing to do but he mouthed hi.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Haha - I'm too tired to justify my actions.


	6. Nightwing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Welcome home, detective." An intruder said in a low smoky tone, as casual as could be. He was in the living room with his back to Dick and seated in an office chair as he nonchalantly thumbed through the numerous cold case files scattered across the desk. It was too dark to see him clearly.

Of course, the first thing Dick tried to do was touch him. Feel his skin, see that he was real and not some hallucination but his hands just passed through Roy's nearly transparent form and the archer winced when it did. 

"Wh... h - how are you....?" Dick felt so stupid when he tried to talk but stupider in his head for not being able to understand what the hell was happening. First, he killed that kid and now he was hallucinating over seeing his dead partner? That's it. Here was the conclusion; he'd gone completely fucking nuts. What other explanation was there? 

Roy opened his mouth to say something but the effort was cut short when he remembered he couldn't speak. Oddly accurate delusion. For a moment, the apparition archer was exasperated, pulling on his hair the way Dick remembered Roy would do when he was frustrated, until something dawned on him and he reached a broken finger into his mouth. Dick's confused frown turned to nausea when he saw just how much deep red was pooled in there, red that Roy spread over his fingertip and proceeded to draw on the pale flesh of his forearm. No, not draw,  _write_. He was scrawling letters in his own blood but the details were difficult to make out with how he was mostly transparent, flickering between varying stages of visibility. 

While he clumsily wrote, Dick rubbed the idea out of his head that Roy was a hologram, there was nothing to project the image and why would there be? Who would get anything out of that? And there were ways to check if you're hallucinating, he'd ran all the mental checks and despite his certainty that he'd gone off the deep end, all evidence pointed against. 

"Roy, that's really you, isn't it?" Dick asked and a distracted nod was his reply before Roy all but thrust his arm into his face, showing him the alignment of sticky red letters, glistening with wetness. 

_Cops are gonna arrest you._

"I know."

He turned his arm over and began scribbling on the paler underside of it, every now and again dipping a finger back into his mouth like some sick ink pot.

_Joker needs to go down. You can't stop him if you're in jail._

Dick knit his brows. 

"What are you saying? That I - I just  _run_?"

Roy bobbed his head yes, taking extreme caution with the movement and it occurred to Dick that holding his head up must be difficult with just his spine for support. Instinctively, the detective made to steady his partner but the action only reminded him that he couldn't touch him. 

They both made eyes at one another, the emotion didn't have a name but Dick was sure it was the same one that was twisting an unseen knife into his heart. This... this was fucking torture and the only thing keeping him from expressing the agony blatantly was the notion that he needed to keep on track. Judging by the way Roy was quickly getting more and more transparent, they didn't have a lot of time. 

Running out of writing space on his own arms, Roy's hand closed around his wrist and gave Dick a start since... wait, why was he not fading through? It didn't make sense yet he focused harder on what was written across his skin. The blood was warm. Sticky and warm, as if freshly drawn. It turned the detective's stomach and it took everything in him to steel against it.  

By the time Roy was done, Dick's entire arm was drenched and shiny with the nightmarish letters and he wanted to read them right away, he did, but looked to the archer instead. For a second, their vision aligned and there wasn't really anything that could be said, nothing that could be done, but Dick wanted to hold onto this second without letting it go. He didn't want to go back to being alone and lose his partner all over again. He didn't want to be  _alone_. 

" _Please_  don't leave again." Coming out of nowhere, Dick didn't mean to whine like that but he felt it. Roy gave an unhappy shake of his head, confirming what was already known, made more obvious with how it was almost impossible to see him now. He was fading faster than daylight. 

Roy leaned closer to him, Dick shut his eyes and when he could find the strength to open them, he was alone in the forest with nothing but sirens screaming in the distance and the tang of blood in his mouth, staining his lips. 

* * *

 

He'd never been jittery. It wasn't like him to be  _anxious_  but here he was, chewing on his fingernails while Pyg pushed a thick syringe into Jason's chest, straight into his still heart and with a push of the plunger filled the dead organ with an unknown serum. It was the fifth like it and it wasn't working. Munchkin was only growing colder and colder. Rigor Mortis had set in long since and Jason's flesh was greyish white with visible blue veins stretching across it. Stripped to the waist, it was clear to see the boy's body was beginning to decompose, most visible from his elbow to his fingertips where the limb was almost entirely under the cover of ruptured veins.

The drug went in and Pyg measured something, made a note of non-existent vital signs, wrote down a few lines but all with an air of nonchalance. Couldn't he get it through his caveman skull that this  _wasn't_  a casual matter? 

"Why isn't it working?" Joker snapped when finally he couldn't take it any longer, leaving the small distance he'd stood at to loom over Jason, opposite Pyg on the other side of the cold aluminium table. The professor hardly looked up from scribbling down his notes.

"It's not an easy process, Joker. It's reanimation of the dead-" 

"He's  _not_  dead!" With the outburst, leaving as suddenly as it came, the clown carefully lowered his hand to stroke Jason's hair softly as touch allowed, mumbling a quiet,

"He's  _sleeping_..."

For a moment of utter silence, Pyg stared at him in perplexity through the holes in his mask that showed his green eyes. Then he snapped back to his task.

"You remember Ara? She was one successful attempt among  _hundreds_  of tries. I hate to tell you, Joker, but it's highly unlikely your... um, what did you call him?"

"Munchkin." Joker absently told him, carding his fingers through the boy's hair.

"Right. Yes. It's highly unlikely your munchkin is compatible with the serum." While he said that, the clown's hand froze abruptly and he rotated slowly around to face Pyg. Taking his sweet time unnervingly long, Joker pushed away from the table and approached with an unnameable smile while he drew a switchblade from somewhere. He walked - almost  _skipped_  until he was no more than a foot from the professor, who had to force himself not to back away.

Showing fear was out of the question, it only encouraged the deranged clown.

"My  _dear_  professor," the Joker began and Pyg hadn't seen him this close  _once_  without the ruby contact lenses. He wondered why he wasn't wearing them...

"You don't seem to understand the  _importance_  of this procedure being successful." His smile got a bit longer, lips curling into a maniacal expression. "Because if I don't get my Jason back, then what reason do I have to not kill everyone? Starting with  _you_."

Pyg swallowed, throat bobbing and he involuntarily fidgeted with the clipboard in his hands.

"I didn't realise anyone meant anything to you."

Returning to the boy, Joker gave Pyg a frightening leer over his shoulder but it was more than an expression, it was a warning.

 "Just get the hell back to work." He brushed Jason's fringe from over the closed bullet wound and traced the stitches in silence. Even if this by some chance did work, Pyg wondered if Joker realised at all how significant the brain damage would be. They'd be fortunate if severe cognitive detriment was all.

"Joker, what sort of terms are you and Black Mask in?"  

The clown shrugged, disinterested. "He gives me things to shut me up if I make a big enough scene and I have a deep-rooted and difficult to manage urge to drive a shower head through his eye socket. On a scale of zero to best friends, I'd say we're best friends."

"Uh... okay then. If you're in such good terms, you might ask him for a favour. Word is that a while ago, Mask procured something from Arabia that's said to have the ability to heal a person from any extent of injury. I've even heard rumours that it can raise the dead." At that last part, Pyg peaked Joker's interests and received his full attention. 

"Mask has something that can fix munchkin?"

"Allegedly. Possibly. If it is true, I might be able to use whatever Mask has to aid in your munchkin's reanimation."

"Well then," he found the willpower to smile again, sauntering away from the table with a newly discovered enthusiasm. He was skipping again.

"I'll go chat Maskie up!"

* * *

 

When the alarms went off and motion sensors in the storage facility came on, Roman thought nothing of it. He sent some men down to go deal with whatever rat got it into their fucked heads that stealing from him was worth their lives but when those men burst into his office -  _without_  knocking - wearing inhumanely elongated grins and shaking with uneven cackles, he knew he had a fucking problem.

It was rare he went in person to anything that wasn't some kind of an image-boosting operation but this was his building, Roman knew how to get around it from the basement to the penthouse. Finding his way to the storage room in the dead of night was no challenge and he didn't switch the lights on when approaching the only source of noise; something rummaging through the weapons crates that arrived from Arabia earlier that month. Past experience said that you had to approach the Joker like he's an endangered animal but fuck that, the maniac was carelessly throwing fragile things over his shoulder and not even flinching when they shattered.

"Joker, what the  _hell_?" He marched up to the crate that's edge the clown was perched on with the fronts of his feet, examining something in both hands, turning it and cocking his head. Roman's fists were already crushed tight at his sides and the fact that another thing smashed against the floor did nothing to appease him.

"Well, hello there, SiSi!" Smiling, Joker waved so hard his arm shook to the shoulder but the enthusiasm came off as fake,  _forced_. Even without illumination, it was dead obvious that he was in an unstable mood... or, more so than he usually was. There was no glint of red in his deranged eyes and it occurred to Roman that... was he not wearing those cheap contact lenses? Come to think of it, his whole look was a little off, that obnoxiously purple trench coat was askew and disgruntled,  makeup smudged to the point where it hardly bore a resemblance to the way everyone was used to seeing the Clown Prince of Crime. Half of his face wasn't even painted, instead covered in thin streaks of greasepaint, white and black, mostly, and the culprit of that mess appeared to be his sleeve, ruined by colour when he ran it across his face at some point. 

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" Roman asked, overlooking everything else to focus on the fact that he'd never seen the clown in such a state. He couldn't get over how that too-long grin of Joker's was scarring under the lipstick, which is honestly something he hadn't known up until now. 

With a flourish, Joker hopped down from the crate and came over with an ever-so-slight limp. Fucking idiot probably hurt himself jumping like that. 

"You've got something that I want and I want it now." He gave Roman a poke in the chest with his finger and at the same time, a breathy uneven chuckle teetered off the edge of his lips. For the most part, Joker's instability was an act so no one would expect he was capable of those elaborate little schemes of his but this time it felt way too genuine to be a facade.

"I have nothing to give you, you  _maniac_." Roman slapped the purple gloved hand back, rather violently but Joker didn't mind in the least.

" _Yesssss,_ you do!" He giggled naughtily. "And I'll take it, with or without your permission. I just need you to tell me where that magic cure-all from Arabia is?"

"What?" Roman frowned and didn't like to admit that Joker confused him momentarily.

"You know," he gave him a playful punch in the arm. "That thingy that can make deadies less dead."

" _What_?"

With an eye roll, Joker scoffed, playfulness finally letting up a little.

"Pyg said you stole something from Arabia that can fix my munchkin."

"....  _Jason_?" If Roman remembered correctly, he'd heard Joker call the lad that on more than one occasion.

"Yes Jason! That - that  _damn_  detective you sent to me and - this is actually all  _your_  fault!" The trademark grin vanished with the outburst, all of a sudden no part of Joker's jolliness survived it. Roman grabbed the clown by his narrow shoulders so he'd stop waving his goddamn arms around like propellers. There was a better chance of getting some sense out of him this way.

"Speak to me, clown, what happened with Jason and that bitch detective?" At least, that's what he made out. Something with those two. 

Joker tipped his head with a harsh breath that turned into a disingenuous smile.

"Grayson and I were playing a game. He cheated.  _Jason_  is  _dead_."

Roman's expression grew still, grip loosening on Joker.

"Grayson  _killed_  the kid?" 

"Oh yes, he did." He nodded wildly. "And now you're giving me whatever that magic thingy you have is."

With a long exhale, Roman released Joker and raked his fingers across his face.  _Fuck_. He hadn't had a doubt that Grayson was a loose cannon but murdering a kid?  _Jason_? That was taking it further than he thought Grayson could. Honestly, Roman was pissed the fuck off. Where the hell was he supposed to find a new plaything as good as the last one? Jason never complained, never said no to anything, you don't get those sorts of lackeys often.

And  _now_  Joker wanted the vial of Lazarus Pit water? The  _only_  one he had? Fuck, it cost Roman more than he cared to think about to bribe Al Ghul's guard to steal what he could. True, a second buyer hadn't made a good enough offer yet but still...

"That's very unfortunate Joker, but I don't have any reason to help you." It wasn't in his nature to give things away or be intimidated, which is why Joker swishing a switchblade out and pressing the point into his middle did nothing.

"Your little knife isn't scaring me, clown." He bit dryly. 

"Give. It. To me." Joker's teeth set, voice coming between them like a growl. He pushed the knife a half inch deeper but Roman didn't show a flinch of pain.

"Or you won't be able to continue with your hebephiliac tendencies."

Roman's eyes narrowed when Joker hit that tender spot. Was it that obvious he was peeved over losing his plaything? Not only that, the kid was a ruthless fucking killer, the most dangerous sort since A, he was good at it and B, he did whatever the fuck he was told. Roman often imagined how useful that little critter would be as an adult, without that useless weak child's body.

And it would be interesting to see what the Pit's powers could really do. Know exactly what he was marketing. 

"If I help you, Joker, our earlier deal still stands, yes?" He tipped his head. "We both share equal parts of Jason's reins?"

"Assuming we pull this off," Joker took the hand he extended and shook it firmly.

"Then yes, nothing will change." 

* * *

~~AN EVENTFUL FOUR YEARS LATER~~

* * *

 

Truth be told, if Dick had known the Pandora's Box that Joseph Kerr was, he never would have opened the lid in the first place. If not for his sake, if not for Jason's, then for Barbara's. That fucking psycho did right by his word to destroy everything Dick held dear. The Joker  _shot_  her. Straight through the middle, he shot her and if that wasn't enough, while she was bleeding out on her home's floor, she was made very aware that her fiance was nothing but a backstabbing bastard. 

Barbie wasn't dead, paralysed from the waist down but not dead. Needless to say, with the news of Dick's infidelity and the excellent job Joker did of framing him for the murder of that family living next to him on Carnival Street - shot with his gun - they broke up. She moved on from Gotham pretty soon after that and he couldn't say he blamed her. It was safest for her. He never wanted to hurt her, especially to this extent, Barbara being out of further harm's way was a minuscule crumb of comfort amidst this shit storm. 

The official story goes that Detective Grayson went off the rails after the tragic demise of his partner, Speedy, and became obsessed with the idea that an innocent witness to the crime committed it. He harrassed said witness and his son for several days leading up to the incident where he broke in, killed them, and hid the bodies somewhere no one would find them. To leave no witnesses, Detective Grayson also shot the neighbouring family who called it in. And then he went off the grid.

It was a good story. Entertaining. Tied everything up in a nice little bow, all except for one thing; it was complete and utter bullshit. Only Dick had no way to prove it and thus, stayed far away from the GCPD, who uprooted everything on the hunt for him until Gordon called it off after almost a year. By that point, Dick didn't even reside in Gotham anymore. He didn't go far, just the sister city, Bludhaven, close enough to be on the lookout for that fucking clown. It was his life's new mission to kill Joker but as if he hadn't made everything hard enough already, Joker just... sort of stopped existing. After shooting Barbara and burning the last intact bridge Dick had, the clown became suspiciously inactive. No mass shootings and no car bombs. Nothing. 

He was up to something. Dick didn't have a doubt but despite all his efforts, he couldn't find the bastard. Ditching the cop thing was a move he had no input in but it sure did make things easier as far as acquiring information and putting a stop to criminals went. Vigilantism, after doing it himself, he saw the appeal Roy once had. But even without the restrictions of the law and warrants and all that shit, Joker was nowhere to be found, sifting through his fingers like sand. 

Dick briefly entertained the idea that after whatever Jason was to him was taken away, Joker had an epiphany and his ways took a drastic 180 but that was quickly scrapped. It was the stupidest thing he could imagine. People like that didn't change. No matter how much goddamn time rolled by, Joker would always be Joker.

And Jason? Shit. Dick thought about him every single night and most of the day, unwittingly thinking back on how light his body had felt in his arms and the intense burning redness of his blood.... that was engraved into his brain. He wouldn't forget, no matter that it happened what could be considered a fairly long time ago.  It didn't feel like four years, it was more like yesterday. The only thing that arose from that incident that Dick could even  _entertain_  as positive was that it was the final push leading to whatever he was now and all the good he achieved doing things Roy's way. 

 _You owe it to that kid not to let Joker get away. No matter what you have to do_. That's what Roy had written on his arm and the latter part involved not getting himself charged for things he didn't do. He owed a lot more people than just Jason and he did  _everything_  he could to ever have a chance of making it right.

Still, it didn't bring that kid back from the dead or make it  _right_. It had  _never_  been Dick's intention for things to happen the way they did but then... none of this had.  

For a countless time, he mulled it over, torturing himself by recounting the exact number of seconds that it took for the bullet to fly across the room and bury itself in Jason's head. _Two_ seconds. He winced when he thought back on the noise lead made when it cracked bone, concentrating completely on that as he entered his safe house through one of the windows. It wasn't his safe house exactly, but Roy wasn't using it anymore and wouldn't object to it if he laid claim. It was a place to lay low and lick the wounds he routinely acquired. It was a secure location, rigged with high-tech alarms that no one other than him should be able to get through without tripping.... 

So why the fuck did Dick instantly snap into the notion that he wasn't alone when he came in? Instinct never lead him wrong, he stopped dwelling on the past and yanked an escrima stick off his belt, instantly going about checking every room but he didn't have to search long before,

"Welcome home, detective." An intruder said in a low smoky tone, as casual as could be. He was in the living room with his back to Dick and seated in an office chair as he nonchalantly thumbed through the numerous cold case files scattered across the desk. It was too dark to see him clearly. 

"Who are you?" Glaring, Dick demanded, braced for a fight when he cautiously approached. How did this guy get in,  not trip the alarms  _and_  know what his former status was? Every red flag had gone twenty feet above ground and then... he flicked the lights on. Dick heard the intruder smile when he did that as if it was all he ever wanted and he spun slowly around in the chair. 

He was...  _not_  what was expected. Not possibly more than a damn teenager, he sported a red hoodie and a cold smirk when his hand hovered over the gun strapped to his hip. There were several things about him that reminded Dick of a patchwork doll, the mismatched eyes - one brown, the other green - and white bangs growing beside the rest of his black hair. And freckles. Dick made the realisation he had freckles shortly before his gaze swept down the teen's body to the dog curled up comfortably in his lap. Jayakrishna, the mutt of Jason's that Dick took in. 

She wasn't a generally friendly animal, snapping and biting strangers. She'd lose her head if anyone broke in yet here she was, peacefully in a deep slumber as if she hadn't experienced bliss like the teen's company in years. Apparently, she didn't pick up on the menacing vibe radiating off him.

"I think she remembers me." The teen mused while he threaded his fingers through the dog's scruffy coat of fur, gazing down at her....  _lovingly_? The ever-present smile made his voice come off as almost light-hearted but Dick made out undertows of something everything but behind it. He was so familiar but at the same time,  _not_. 

"Who the fuck are you and how did you get in here?" He snapped a second time, not being able to place the familiarity killing him.

"Aww, you don't know who I am? I'm  _hurt_." He cocked his head close to playfully and Dick steeled himself when he moved his hand, but it wasn't to attack or anything. No, he just brushed his snowy hair aside so he could show off the scar it had hidden. It looked like... a  _bullet_  once went in. Dick's heart dropped like a ton of bricks, the teen scoffed in mock amusement when he taunted,

"Just hit ya like a headshot, didn't it, Detective Grayson?" 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mwahaha... next time, we go back and see exactly what Joker, Pyg, and Black Mask did to Jay so we can better understand him as he is now. I hope to see you there.


	7. We Meet Again!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Jason?!" Dick dropped his escrima stick and Jason felt something devious in him preen from hearing his name come from that man's lips in such confused shock. It was so precious how wide his eyes got. Really cute. Comedic.
> 
> "Happy to see me?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, I'm early, I know. Remember we're back in the past for this first part.

It was like waking up in the slowest fucking way imaginable. It felt like hours before Jason even made out grey blurring shapes moving around him in a distorted aberration. But then the sting of a syringe turned to lightning. Or fire. It burned as if the gates of hell were just thrown open in his face. It screamed and he screamed with it,  _raw_ , writhing but he could go nowhere, not with something cold and metallic encircling his limbs.

Thrumming wings of a caged bird beat wildly in his chest, slamming into his ribs until they bruised. Body violently shaking, his terror filled eyes were wide, darting blindly and rapidly to his surroundings. There was a bitter taste in the back of his mouth, he couldn't get rid of it, his breath was coming out in shallow panicked gasps. He didn't know what to do or think over the rising tide of cold terror. Jason didn't know what was happening.

" _Shh_ , munchkin. Don't be scared, daddy's here." A warm hand landed on his cheek, contrasting how frozen he was but at the same time, burning alive. There was acid in his veins, there had to be. There was no other way to explain it.

Whimpering was the last thing Jason remembered doing before everything swivelled back to black.

* * *

 

The next however-fucking-long amount of time went by with Jason flitting in and out of varying states of consciousness, never fully 100% awake. He was vaguely aware of hands on him, the smooth way Italian leather gloves glided over his body, the chaste kisses that made him bristle. He almost heard the low moans of his name over the loud wailing of whatever burned like hell in his blood, filling his head and his ears, the only thing that wasn't completely distorted.

What the fuck did they do to him? What even happened? All he remembered was the deafening clap of a gunshot, playing again and again through his shambled head. A noise that went well with that was  _sawing_. The screech of a buzz saw tormented him, long after the flashing white hot pain in his arm that the man with the pig mask caused him. And then there was the agony of the cylindrical metal pushed into his eye.

He didn't know what professor Pyg did that for. Or the saw thing. They seemed like tests, the man would write things down and murmur to himself every now and again. What little awareness Jason regained, he realised he was frequently on an aluminium table with wires running into him, pumping this in or taking that out.

His right hand hardly moved, cold and numb, and half of his vision sluggish. Everything hurt  _so_  fucking much. The pain was among the only things he was registering. It throbbed or made him scream his lungs out, it was sharp or dull but  _constant_.

Bang. He tried to place the noise. Bang. It didn't get any clearer. Bang.  _Bang_.  ** _Bang_**. Nothing.

* * *

 

Joker chewed his fingernails, staring restlessly at munchkin. The magic cure all of Roman's worked but to what extent? Jason wasn't talking, moving much at all, he was basically as good as brain dead, which did make a lot of sense in hindsight, given the massive hole blown into his head. Wasn't the Lazarus water meant to fix that? Fix everything?

Utterly silent, Jason was sitting cross-legged, a foot from the wall and staring unseeingly at it. He was slightly slumped, spine arched, the only movement shallow small breaths and slow, vacant blinks here and there. He was sickly pale, like milk, making the contrast of skin tones even more obvious in his right arm. The limb had begun to decay, the walls of the veins had broken down and instead of waiting for Joker to return with the Lazarus water, Pyg sawed half of munchkin's arm off and replaced it with another he pulled off a corpse. Who knows where he got it from but it was darker than Jason, stitches and staples holding it to the joint of his elbow.

If Joker didn't still need Pyg, that man would be dead a thousand times over.

The downward angle of which the bullet careered through Jason's skull, it severely damaged an optic nerve, cutting almost clean through it so what did Pyg do? He went ahead and replaced that too, couldn't even find the same colour. The iris was dark brown but fortunately, responsive to light. Detective Grayson almost blinded munchkin on top of killing him...

Oh, he fully deserved to have his fiance shot. Joker just wished he'd killed her but perhaps leaving her in that wheelchair was a nicer punishment. A constant reminder instead of something Grayson wouldn't recover from with time.

Joker pushed away from the wall he'd been leaning on and walked the small distance to Jason, sitting by him on the floor. He didn't look away from the bleach white wall that matched everything in the sterile space of Pyg's lab. They were here only for those observations the professor said he needed to make for precaution's sake. Admittedly, Joker didn't have to be here but he didn't trust that man in the pig mask as far as he could throw him. If he turned around, he'd do something else to Jason, other than cut his arm off and drill a hole into his skull to pull his eye out.

"Jason," Joker took the boy by his chin and turned his head to be met with unfocusing mismatched eyes. This wasn't fun. The clown wasn't used to not having fun in situations where people got hurt and killed. This wasn't even tragicomical.

" _Jason_ ," He tried his name again, more sternly but to no reaction. For a moment, Joker's gaze drifted to the part of Jason's hair that was turning white. Pigment damage, the professor said. A hard enough blow could cause severe pigment damage and a gunshot was certainly enough impact for that to happen.

"I tried to find that dog of yours, pumpkin," Joker lamentably said, running his thumb down Jason's cheek. "But it's right good missing. I'll get you a new one, though, so don't worry."

No response. No bit of understanding. Nothing. Just one very slow blink. He exhaled when letting go of Jason and the boy slowly turned his head to face the wall once more. He was fixated on it to an obsessive point.

Joker stood back up when he heard the door click open. In came no other than Black Mask, looking as creepy as he always did with that gimp mask that really didn't go with the neat business suit. It was worse without it, however. That was a fact.

"Is he no better?" Roman asked as if he actually cared. The long lingering glance he sent Jason really should have given him everything he wanted to know. Joker didn't reply, digging his fingers into his crossed arms and his silence was fine, seeing as how the other was perfectly content to keep the conversation going by himself.

"Good." Joker heard him smile. "I prefer our Jason like this."

"I'm sure you do." The clown rolled his eyes with a huff. People were considerably more acquiescent when they had just suffered extreme brain damage, blunt force trauma, amputation - oh, and let's not forget  _death_. It wasn't Joker's preference to let Roman use Jason for whatever he felt like when munchkin was in this condition, but what other choice was there? His school still needed that money. It was already hard enough to run it with everything that happened, every time Deathstroke's son bothered the living daylights out of him, demanding to know where his friend was.

And Jason was going to be  _so_  behind in his classes.

"I just can't get used to you like this," Roman commented as he tipped his head slightly to one side and Joker assumed he meant the lack of carnival makeup. With no desire to terrorise anyone at the moment, there was no point on spending tedious time applying it.

"Well don't get used to it." He glared in another direction but Roman just wasn't willing to take the hint and leave him alone.

"Who gave you these?" As if amused, he traced one half of the gnarly Chelsea smile with a brush of his finger. Joker violently slapped his hand away, so hard his wrist bent back but to that, he only gave an entertained chuckle.

"Alright then. Not feeling chatty? That's a new one for you, clown."

Joker shoved past him, using more force than need be as he headed to the door with the parting snap of,

"Whatever you're here for, don't hurt Jason." He growled to himself when he pulled the door shut behind, closing his fist tightly around the handle, knuckles cracking until it became painful. This wasn't part of the game. Joker loved spontaneous turns of events as much as anyone but this wasn't one he liked at all.

How did this even happen? How was he going to fix it?  _Consequences_ , there was something he wasn't used to dealing with. And now there were so many of them.

* * *

~~TWO YEARS LATER.~~

* * *

 

"Let me the fuck out!" With a bark of anger, Jason slammed both his palms against the cast iron bars of the cell door, leaving his hands stinging when he wrapped his fingers around the cold metal. He yanked at the grating, pushed it, shook it, the foreseeable futility of his attempts causing nothing but the loud banging of the hinges dug into the concrete walls.

He took a step back but that was only to kick out at the lock with his full strength. They weren't keeping him in here another second. Minute. Hour. Day.  _Year_. Ever since self-awareness crawled back in bits that melded together to form a more complete image, Jason had been trying to free himself from this fucking cell in the back of Pyg's lab. The professor wanted him to run tests and shit on, Joker wasn't going to let him out until he was obedient again and Roman? Well, it was no question what that bastard got out of his confinement.

After Jason realised wounding that man was something he greatly enjoyed doing, getting tranqed was the only way anyone got their hands on him. Yay somnophilia. He fucking  _hated_  it. If he ever woke up half-way through, he'd rip Roman's throat out with his teeth.

Jason landed the lock another vicious blow with his foot. The sharp bang reminded him of the lovely,  _lovely_  noise that filled the air before the bullet hit. Grayson was  _dead_. Jason swore that he would kill that fucking detective for causing all of this to happen. Before he even remembered who did this to him, he knew someone was going to pay a heavy toll for it.

It took a while for the haze of overwhelming confusion and not knowing what was what to pass but once it did, everything was crystal clear. He recalled how he used to be a meek, quiet little child, easier to push around than dominoes and now he couldn't be further from that. Gone was the passive obedient squirrel of a boy who did whatever he was told and why wouldn't he be? He was  _shot_  dead.

Another kick and nothing gave. The door stood insurmountable. Jason screamed in frustration and tore at his varicoloured hair, twisting the strands around his fists until they burned like all hell. He paced in the throes of rage-filled restlessness, vowing to kill every single person within a ten-mile radius unless he was let out right now. Joker and Pyg, Roman, they were by no means oblivious concerning his desire to be released but all for their own reasons, none respected it.

He was just their fucking  _thing_. That possession - that  _object_  they could do whatever the fuck they wanted to with no regard for what  _he_  wanted. He wanted freedom, he wanted to draw blood and he wanted to find his fucking dog. Was that too much to ask for?

"Making quite the racket, aren't you, sweetheart?"

Jason threw Roman a death glare when he appeared at the door, offering his trademark smooth suave voice to contrast the uproar the teen was causing. Pyg was with him, dangling a dart gun from his stupid chubby hand and close behind them, Joker. He wasn't exuding his murder-happy mirth today. The teen really did hope he was fucking miserable. The clown was one of the sparks to this Greek fire, he deserved it. And Jason regretted ever taking a bullet for that monster.

"Any of you touches me and you're fucking  _dead_." Jason swore with venom dripping thickly from each word.

"Oh, and how are you going to do that, laddie?" Roman taunted with a grin in his voice. Keys jingled in the lock and the door swung open, Jason backed far away from him,  _them_ , against the wall with his teeth bared.

"Get away." The teen growled shortly before he lunged to get his hands on one of them. Used to this, Pyg fired a dart into his shoulder but the sudden sting was too every day for him to even yelp in response.

"Get off!" Jason struggled when hands came around his arms, twisted out of his use, his strength fading fast as the tranquilliser took immediate effect. A couple of seconds and he'd be out.

"Quit  _fighting_ , munchkin." Joker grit, bruising him to the bone with how hard he gripped Jason's wrist, right by the old buzz saw scar. He kicked Pyg away and tried wrenching loose.

"You'll never be let out of here if you don't start cooperating, beautiful." Roman sneered, fingers wrapping around Jason's pale throat and squeezing. The teen choked, snarled, sent Roman a death leer from the corner of his eye, vision beginning to blur. He spat at the man before his legs got too weak to hold him. He collapsed onto his knees and the massive weight of three adults was piled onto him. He couldn't breathe, they were crushing the air out of his lungs.

When he was down, so close to fully blacking out, he vaguely heard what they were talking about.

"Okay. He's out. We can ran a couple more tests now."

"Are you finally going to find out what makes pumpkin so angry? He's not  _supposed_  to be aggressive like this. He's such a quiet sweet munchkin."

"Don't worry about aggression, Joker. I'll tame that right out of him." Roman breathily chuckled and struck dread into Jason with it.

When they dragged him off the floor, across it, he groaned feebly. 

Everything went black.

* * *

  
~~YET ANOTHER TWO YEARS LATER.~~

* * *

 

Exhaling boredly underneath his breath, Jason stared with dull eyes at the blinding white rays of artificial lighting hanging above him. The cold of the metal the table and restraints really cut into him on this particular afternoon. Or evening. Or morning. Jason really had no sense of time when everything seemed so monotonously unchanging.

Joker and Roman weren't here today so just him and the pig. Huzzah. He  _loved_  those low weird fucking murmurs the fat bastard made to himself while he wrote down notes. What the hell was he even documenting anymore? What was left that he hadn't observed?

Jason leered murderously at the professor when he came to test how his pupils responded to the bloody pentorch shone into his face. He growled, lip curling back to show his teeth.

"Oh stop that." Frowning, Pyg scolded him like he was a naughty child.

"Go fuck yourself." He spat, fists balling and his wrists burned as he pulled against the cuffs. He wanted so badly to cave that man's skull in...

"I bet you'd like that."

"And you  _wouldn't_? I don't see you getting laid too of'en-" Kaboom is an interesting noise. A noise that peaked Jason's interests greatly when the door abruptly exploded into a raving mess of heat and orange fire, seconds before the crackle of gunfire beat through the opening. What the hell?

With a jolt and burst of sparks, a misfire crashed into a cuff and made Jason jump in fright. His arm jerked up responsively, straight to freedom. Wait - the metal  _broke_? It broke! Clean through and Jason wasn't about to waste the opportunity. He sat bolt upright, searched his surroundings and above the chaos of soaring bullets, saw that Pyg had mistakenly left his instrument table at hand's reach.

Jason snatched up a scalpel up and jammed it into the lock holding his leg in place, twisting until he heard a click. While he was busy, Pyg took a bullet to the thigh with a high pitched squeal. Fucking karma.

The last leg cuff Jason kicked off and then it was just his right arm keeping him pinned. He yanked and pulled, wrenched, did everything until his shoulder was about to pop out of its socket.

Then all of a sudden the rain of bullets died when the room was filled with gunmen.  _Black Mask's_  men, no doubt with the gimp masks.

"Grab him." One of them grunted, gesturing to Jason with a jerk of his gun.  _Fuck_. So Roman finally decided to go ahead with taking Jason all for himself? Dammit!

"Don't touch me!" He snapped when two guys went for him, swinging his free arm at them but only had it captured and used against him. He grunted in pain when they piled on top of him, ripping his restrained arm free.

"Boss says not to hurt him."

"Boss says  _what_?" The addition of the new voice came with the solid thud of a fist meeting the head of Mask's goons. Jason didn't know what he was watching when a gunman turned on the others and pounced on them, blocking all upcoming attacks like a natural born fighter. WHAT....  _Oh well_. Back to work.

The scalpel? Jason slammed it into the throat of the man who held him down, throwing the screaming bastard off him. He wasn't going to waste a second wondering what was happening with the turncoat. Speaking of, the turncoat took a second to ground everyone with the simple pullback of his finger on the trigger of an AK-47.

What was he doing? Who was he? He looked every bit like one of Roman's minions, those same minions he shot dead.

Jason got off the table, backed away from turncoat as he approached, both of them stepping over corpses.

"Who the hell are you?" He demanded when his back thudded into a wall, trapping him. He scanned his surroundings for anything to defend himself with. Nothing he could reach.

Turncoat stopped at a reasonable distance and dropped his weapon, raising his hands to remove his mask. He pulled the buckles, lifting the thing from over his head. It disgruntled his sable hair and Jason didn't believe it, but  _anywhere_ , he'd know those husky blue eyes that fixed on him.

" _Jaybird_!" Grant exclaimed, everything falling from his grip as he crossed the room and caught Jason in his arms, crushing the ever-loving life out of him.

"Oh my  _God_ , man! I heard Sionis was gonna steal some hush-hush project of Pyg's here, I came to steal it off him but - what're you doing here? I thought you were dead!" He panted frantically, unsure gaze darting over Jason when he was released.

"Pretty sure  _I'm_  the hush-hush project Sionis wants." Jason coughed, winded from the force of that embrace. He glanced up at Grant and surprise, look who was still taller. Bigger. Stronger. He'd grown so well into his features, all so dashing and chiselled.

"Where have you been? I haven't seen you in literal fucking years." He couldn't get over his confusion. It was sweet really.

"I'll explain everything to you later, G." Jason patted him on the arm as he went by, limping because someone injured him during that scuffle.

He couldn't quite grasp it....  was he  _free?_  Walking around without shackles was such a luxury. He didn't get three strides before he was planning what to do with his new found freedom. A storm of dark thoughts and ideas swirled in his head.

Jason smiled to himself when he picked up the buzz saw Pyg left on the instrument table. Experimentally, he pulled the trigger, watching with a glint in his eye as the blade spun.

"We've got a lot to do, Grant,"  Jason told his friend, approaching Pyg, grounded from his leg shot. The pudgy man tried dragging himself away with long red paint strokes in his wake.

"But  _first_...." His grin spread wide, demented, saw hovering closer to the professor.

"... Let's see how  _he_  likes it."

* * *

 

"Just hit ya like a headshot, didn't it, Detective Grayson?" He smirked.

" _Jason_?!" Dick dropped his escrima stick and Jason felt something devious in him preen from hearing his name come from that man's lips in such confused shock. It was so precious how wide his eyes got. Really cute. Comedic.

"Happy to see me?" Jason took the edge of the desk and with it, gave himself enough momentum for a few playful spins in the office chair. Lazy blurs of colour went by in the axis and he kept his wintry smile fixed on Dick while the poor guy tried to put two and two together. How? What? Where? Why? When? Those were probably only a fraction of the things he was asking himself. The loud non-understanding rumble of his thoughts was almost audible. 

"H - how... Jason, you.. you're  _dead_." Dick stammered, at a loss. Jason stopped spinning in favour of facing him, breathing out a happy exhale as he did. It was relieving that those grossly exaggerated rumours of him being six feet under were shattered. He hadn't been dead for a long while, it was nice to update people's beliefs.

" _Correction_ ; I'm  _supposed_  to be dead." He spun again and when he came back around, added conversationally,

"But don't feel bad about that. You did your absolute  _best_  to make it permanent."

The chair stopped turning with a jerk when Dick caught Jason by his shoulders and held him firmly in place... or so he thought. It would be a piece of cake to break his grip and his arms with it, but Jason didn't think there was a need  _yet_. This was too humorous not to watch where it goes.

" _How_  are you alive?" The detective... or former detective demanded when finally he could wrap his head around this. And yay, his first good question.

Leaning back against the chair comfortably, Jason shrugged, stroking  _his_  dog while she slept.

"Something to do with Joker, Pyg, and Black Mask, I suppose. But  _orange_  you gonna ask me what I'm doing here?" He smiled so sweetly up at Dick, an expression he was sure couldn't hide the exact amount that he wanted to rip this man's throat out. He  _so_  wanted to even out the scores right here and now but he held onto restraint. For just a  _bit_  longer.

" _Why_  are you here, Jason?" Dick's hands tightened on Jason's shoulders, one moved to brush his hair back and uncover the scar he put there. The teen allowed it, the touching and the gawking, just so his friend here believed this was real.  _He_  was real, not some piece of ghost toast like Speedy.

"I wanted to get my dog, seeing you is an unintended bonus." That was a total lie, Dick was the only reason he came out as far as Bludhaven. Didn't he deserve the knowledge that the kid whose skull he put a bullet through wasn't dead no mo'? Jason was hoping that seeing his face would make Dick extra haunted by that, rip open any scars that had managed to form over gaping wounds.

"You're lying." Dick stated after a second of scanning his features for the telltale signs every good cop knew to look out for. He found them since Jason left them out blatantly, even exaggeratedly. 

Nodding, the teenager hummed a yes.

"I'm a liar and you shot me through the head. We both have our reasons to be upset here." Jason raised his leg and with it, pushed Dick away from him, making him lose his hold. That was enough of that touchy-feely shit. Adjusting his arms around Jayakrishna, he stood and held her to his chest. His and former Detective Grayson's eyes interlocked and this time, Jason wasn't smiling. He let the real expression behind that fake one show, a belligerent glare.

"I  _never_  meant to hurt you." Dick insisted but sternly so, as if he finally picked up on the menace coming off his visitor. They weren't here to talk about wrongdoings and say sorry.

" _Hurt_  me? You  _killed_  me." Jason bit, gritting his teeth while his hand fisted around a bunch of Jayakrishna's fur but careful not to harm her. She continued sleeping, oblivious to all.

"I was aiming at  _Joker_. You - you just...."

"Got in the  _way_?" The contrite emotion coming off Grayson irritated Jason. He wasn't allowed to pretend like it was an unavoidable accident. It wasn't. Dick didn't say anything, he didn't have anything to say and just presented Jason with those pretty hopeless eyes of his.

At his loss for words, Jason gave a mock scoff.  _Pathetic_.

"I'm taking the fucking dog." He started past Dick with intent he was going to keep to himself, for now, except his arm - well, not  _his_  arm but the one attached to his body - was caught in a hand that had no intention of letting him go. Taking his time, Jason faced the former detective, tightening his grip around Jayakrishna.

"What happened to you?" Adjusting the fingers circling his wrist, Dick asked in a whole new tune, this time remorseful and  _concerned_. Fuck him.

"What are you now - eighteen?  _Seventeen_? You shouldn't be out on your own.  _Please_  let me help you." His pleading whiny voice really got on Jason's nerves, almost as much as his proposition. He wrenched his limb free, clenching it into a fist that trembled to be buried in the detective's too-pretty face.

"Who says I'm alone?" He smirked in a cold, conceited way for the umpteenth time.

"And I  _still_  don't need your fucking help. Not then and not now." Jason leaned closer to him, every muscle gone rigid from unparalleled anger. He was at Dick's line of height now, staring him directly in the eye. Face-to-face was a pleasure he didn't realise he'd enjoy this much. So nice not being a four-foot-tall kid anymore.

"You're gonna wish I was, though. You're gonna wish I stayed fucking  _dead_." He all but hissed that part and Grayson flinched at the hostility behind it. And every word was deadly true. This wasn't so much an idle drop by as it was a warning of the inevitable.

"... Why did you come here, Jason?" Dick took a solemn, weary turn when he realised he wasn't going to get through with his offers of charity and pity.

"I want  _you...._  to try to stop me." He sneered.

"Stop you from doing what?"

"Proving a point."

" _What_  point?" Ooh, he got a bit more aggravated there. Cute.

The teen came  _even_  closer, so that there weren't five inches between them, their breathing intermingling and  _fuck_  if Jason didn't enjoy the note of pure unease he picked up from the other.

"That people like me, Joker, Black Mask, we're not so bad."

"You're  _murderers_."

To remind him as he appeared to have already forgotten, Jason tapped the scar hidden by his hair. Dick flinched.

"And you're  _not_? Face it, Detective, we're one and the same. An' I'm gonna make you see that." Finally, he took a step back, if only to deliver his parting grin, tethered to the amount he wanted to whip out his gun and make them even. He carried, in fact, the very same weapon that was used to...

"Everyone is a murderer. Like me. Like you. People think we're bad, that we should all just die but  _really_ , we're  _all_  killers."

"You're crazy." Dick sincerely let him know, no longer playing that let-me-help-you shtick. No, that was fully ditched and at last, he understood that Jason wasn't here to bury the hatchet or turn a new leaf. Sorry, hell no, fuck that.

"No thanks to you."

"Jason, I can't let you leave if you're going to kill someone."

"Death doesn't mean  _shit_!" He burst out, throwing one arm up.

"You showed me that, Detective.  _You_. It's reversible, it's  _not_  forever."

"That's only in  _your_  case." Dick grabbed Jason again, roughly around his biceps, dragging him a step closer so that he dropped Jayakrishna. She landed on her feet, already half awake from their arguing, and snarled viciously at Dick.

"Kid, I don't know what Joker did to you but it messed you up. You need  _help_."

Jason's fingers wrapped around his wrists, elegantly so, daring to meet his eyes head on and hard. His bottom lip was stiff, expression dark.

"You know that saying? The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world? You know what it means?  _No_? It means adults,  _parents_ , have a decisive influence on the future direction of society because they raise and nurture the next generation." With a sharp tug, he removed Dick's grip on him and stepped back.

"Joker fucked me up long,  _long_  before you and your little gun came along." With that, he struck the good detective straight in his face with the heel of his hand.  _Whack_. The blow was hard, solid, Dick stumbled into the wall then fell down it, momentarily stunned and gasping.

Casually, Jason picked his dog up. Her angry snarls turned to happy panting, she licked his face.

"Let's go, girl." He ruffled her ears as he walked out, kissing the top of her head and giving an absent wave over his shoulder.

"Later days, detective."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *insert Flashdance background music* He's a maniac... maniac...


	8. Red Hood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> That parting look..... That wasn't regret. It was like Jason finally did something exactly the way clownface wanted it.

_Crazy.... Crazy...._

"I hate that word, Grant." Jason mumbled, slumped as he sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the pleasantly unchanging oatmeal coloured wall. Grant muffled an exhale when he started talking again. It was three am. He didn't mind Jason being in his bedroom for some undisclosed reason but why'd he have to speak? Some of them needed sleep to remain ravishing. 

"What word?" He grumbled into the pillow, half of his face buried in its heavenly softness.

" _Crazy_."

God, it was too early for this.... But he had to, didn't he? They were friends and shit, and with that title came certain responsibilities. Grant groaned when he rolled over to face Jason, covers crinkling. He was looking at his friend's bare back, dotted with scars and bruises new and old.

Before a few nights, Grant thought Jason, his childhood playmate, was dead. Or missing. Then by chance, over the static, he caught wind of there being something in Pyg's lab that Black Mask was greatly interested in pertaining. As an opportunist, Grant sought to steal it himself and sell it back to the crime boss. Imagine his shock of discovering Jason down there, caged and rabid.

"Someone called me crazy yesterday." Jason absently went on and he raised his arms to hold himself loosely. He was different from what Grant remembered. In school, Jason was quiet, timid and unadventurous. He kept to himself and avoided getting into trouble at any cost. Now? He was deranged, violent, impulsive and ruthlessly murderous.

Grant _loved_ it. It was like his Jason but all his negative qualities swapped for better. Too bad 'better' was depriving him of precious hours of shuteye. 

"So?" He propped himself up on one elbow.

"What's so bad about crazy?"

"It separates a person from all accountability." He dully responded, utterly void of all emotion. For just a second, Grant's eyes followed his shoulder to his elbow and then the different coloured skin. Aged scars like puncture marks were dotted on either side, reminiscent of the staples that once held the limb fixed. Cool addition to his supervillain aesthetic. Like Deathstroke's eye, Joker's smile, or Black Mask's entire face.

"I want people to hold me responsible for things I do that may seem crazy. I don't want to be innocent by reason of insanity."

"I'm sure no one will think that, blad. When it comes to guys like us, the public can't wait to point fingers."

"Yeah, guys like us." Jason scoffed coldly, rolling his unsettling eyes. Even in the dark, something about them sent chills down Grant's spine, caused the fine hair on the back of his neck to stand on end.

"Just wait, G. I'll make you and everyone else see we're all guys like us." He sounded so dark, intent, borderline sinister. At some point, Jason had turned his attention from the walls to the adjacent door.

Grant sat up straight, on the edge of the bed with him and only then noticed he was holding a gun, finger on the trigger, muzzle pointed in the same direction as his gaze. If the Wilson boy didn't know any better, he'd think there was someone there Jaybird was watching.

For a second, Grant tried to pinpoint what he was looking at but failing snapped him back to the topic.

"I've been meaning to ask you about that, Jason." He rubbed the back of his neck, smoothing down the signs of his unease.

"What are we gonna do? I still don't know what your masterplan is."

"It's simple. I'm - _ngh_." Without warning, Jason's head dropped into his hand, he pinched the bridge of his nose, wincing violently with his teeth grit. At the drop of a hat, all his muscles were tense, features screwed up in pain.

"Jason?" Grant leaned around him, instantly on guard but his attempts to put his hands on his friend were met with him being batted off in irritation.  Against his better judgement, he respected what Jason wanted and could do nought but sit by while Jason panted through whatever this was in small quick bursts.

Grant balled his fists on his thighs, pinching the corner of his lip between his canines.  Jason had a fistful of white hair, pulling at it as if he wanted to rip it out. A bullet travels at over a thousand miles per hour, it broke Jason's skull when it went into his head, and Grant was fairly sure this thing that looked like a terrible headache was tied to that.

Which meant there was nothing he could do about it.

After what seemed like only moments, Jason lifted his head from his hand, blinking back the pain. His breathing evened out but the skull-splitting migraine clearly hadn't passed fully. Heavily, he swallowed down a mouthful of nausea.

"What I was trying to say is-"

"The end game can wait. I think what you need is sleep."

"I'll sleep when I'm dead." Jason protested with a huff, scowling when he pushed off the bed. He headed for the door, shoving his gun into the holster Grant hadn't realised he was wearing. Jesus, did he not remember what being off guard meant?

"Get dressed. We have work to do." He grabbed Grant's crumpled T-shirt off the floor and tossed it at him.

"Where are we going?"

"To school."

* * *

 

Rifle across his shoulders, hood drawn almost over his eyes, Jason entered his old classroom with a purposeful step while Grant sashayed after in the uniform he ripped off his dad's matching one, completely clueless as to why they were here.

"Pumpkin!" Joker exclaimed happily from where Jason had handcuffed him to the chair behind the teacher's desk. He was beaming, that crazy son-of-a-bitch was positively delighted at seeing Jason despite how he had all the strings and the clown was defenceless. Defenseless goes for Roman too, chained to the wall mounted radiator. The bastard wasn't so smug now, was he?

"Oh, daddy is so glad his munchkin is feeling better!" Joker went on, the vibe of menace Jason exuded completely going over his head.  

"And I see you even found your old playmate. How lovely. You've grown up so big and strong, Grant, just like your daddy."

From behind him, Jason heard Grant scoff, he bet he rolled those very pretty eyes of his too. If there was one thing the Wilson boy hated, it was being compared to Slade.

"Wilson, I'll give you a million dollars, up front and in cash, if you cut off that insane bitch's head." Roman's fists tightened and he pulled against the cuffs, a hint as to how much built up tension was bottled up in him. Jason knew that tone of voice, the man wanted to hurt him and hurt him bad. 

"Pft. _Please_ ," Grant gestured to himself, "I'm already a million bucks. I don't need your money." 

"We'll take him for everything he's worth, Grant, don't you worry," Jason said, under his breath while he set his rifle down on the desk that used to be his. He felt Roman's murderous leer burning a gaping hole into him when the money came up. Oh, they were taking every cent he had. Jason had already decided. The bastard wouldn't need it when he was dead.

"I'll wring your damn neck, you vile _whore_ ," Roman growled. "And then I'll fuck the hole Grayson put in that pretty head."

"You'll _never_ touch me again." Jason snapped back viciously, the need to murder him bubbling in his belly, rising up his throat. His hand opened and closed around the handle of an invisible dagger. He hated that he had to wait for the moment he could take Roman's worthless life.

But he didn't have to wait much longer. The thought alone made a sinister, low chuckle teeter over his teeth.

"Grant, be a doll and make sure this soaks everything, would you?" Sticking his arm out to the side, Jason offered the other teen one of the gasoline canisters stored in the class supply closet. Murder school had a lot of unsual things to find.

Wordless and obedient, Grant took it and went about sploshing the floors and desks until they were dripping.

"Ooh, is it a barbecue?" Joker giggled in excitement and Jason cast him a glance out the corner of his eye, completely over arguing with him. There was no point, the lunatic would just twist everything around to serve his own amusement. 

" _Yes_ , Joker." He clicked his tongue in irritation, grabbing another deep red plastic canister from the closet. There was enough in there to burn the whole rotten school to the ground. And that's exactly what was on his mind as he set out to soak the old wood floors, very nice and dry, extremely flammable. The building was stone on the outside but the same couldn't be said for the beams and roof, the rafter ties and flooring. Those would go up like a bonfire and without support, the walls were going to collapse in on themselves, leave this place nothing but a smoking pile of rubble.

"You mad that Jaybird is only free 'cause your men fucked up?" Jason heard Grant inquire, crouched by Roman with an empty gasoline canister hanging from a few fingers. 

"You're _dead_ , Wilson." The man swore venomously, jerking against the cuffs that must be cutting into him with how much he was doing stupid things like trying to pull free. Jason really hoped it hurt like all hell. 

"All in good time, I'm sure. You'll be dead first, though."

Glaring bloody murder at Grant, Roman's teeth set with an audible _click_ and he probably would have gone onto list a number of threats he couldn't go through with if Jason hadn't splashed him with gasoline. He coughed and spluttered, Jason inwardly delighted in the sound of him choking for once. He'd never believed in karma but making it happen himself was nothing short of satisfactory.

"You little _bitch_..." Roman cursed at him while clear beads of gasoline rolled down his chin, drip-drip-dripping onto his chest. Jason gave him the most indifferent look of all time, dried up of emotion. He hated Roman, yes, with an intense passion but he wasn't about to dignify him by showing it. No, this was all on his own terms. 

"Grant, you got a light?" Jason inquired when he kicked the final canister over and watched the wave of flammable liquid spread across the floor. 

"Always." Grant dug up a lighter from the compartments of that nifty belt he had, tossing it over and Jason caught it deftly, mid-flight and murmured a thank you. Together with his childhood playmate, he headed for the door and stopped there, coldly eyeing the two men who rocked his cradle. The people who decided what he would be. Were they happy with the finished product?

Realising what he was about to do, Roman was trying to pull his hands free but not Joker, he sat with his legs crossed in the chair even while gasoline was dripping off his hair and washing the greasepaint from his face. He was smiling, his _eyes_ were smiling, he didn't have a care in the world.

"Fuck are you looking at?" Jason snapped when the weight of the clown's gaze quickly got too much.

"Just admiring what a complete lunatic my munchkin has grown up to be. You're positively out of control!" He exclaimed the latter with a laugh of delight, to which Jason simply scoffed, tipping his chin upward a fraction, eyes narrowing on _daddy_.

"So what if I am?" With a bitter and cold smirk, he sparked the lighter and in a second that seemed to stand still, dropped it.

Light and heat erupted when the flame connected with the gasoline, flying across the floor and meeting every end of the room. Screams blew up but just one person's; Roman's. How nice to hear his smooth voice twisted by pain, all confidence distorted when the fire devoured him whole.

But Joker.... Through the writhing limbs of the inferno, Jason saw that the clown hadn't moved from the chair, still smiling pleasantly in Jason's direction and the only thing to change was that.... His hands were free. How long had they been free? They rested in his lap, legs crossed. He was uninterested in the fire consuming the world around. He could save himself but was wasting his time smiling at Jason, time he didn't have.

Something unsettling in his eyes transfixed the teen, holding him unwillingly captive. That was pride. That was glee. Why?

The heat ate away at Jason, stinging his skin but he didn't move, couldn't break the steely connection Joker's gaze formed with his. The fire was getting dangerously close to him, soon it would be upon him, but he just couldn't step back. Questions raced, why was Joker looking at him like that? Didn't he care that he was going to burn?

"What the _fuck_ , blad?" Grant snatched him by his arm and dragged him away from the blazing classroom. Smoke stung in Jason's lungs, spongey organs threatening to burst at the seams while salty tears poured down his cheeks.

Looks like he underestimated how fast this place would go up, the fire seemed like it spread everywhere in no time. The hallway blurred but that was no obstacle for Grant, he was wearing his mask, it protected him from the toxic fumes and were it not for his iron grip latched onto Jason's wrist, getting out of here would be much harder.

Such a reliable friend, without falter to his quick strides Grant guided them both out the front door and down the stone steps where Joker first found his undoing. It was surreal. Did the clown regret ever picking him up? That parting look..... That wasn't regret. It was like Jason finally did something exactly the way clownface wanted it.

And that pissed Jason off! These were supposed to be _his_ terms. Why did Joker get a say in _everything_? 

Jason came out of his thoughts when a violent cough tore up his throat. And then he was coughing, nearly bent double with his balled fist to his mouth. Tiny speckles of blood stained his skin before long.

He heard Grant exhale from where he gazed down at him.

"That's not gonna work." He muttered before his hands came around Jason and heaved him upright, balancing him against his sturdier frame.

"C'mon, man." He grunted, hauling Jason away while he shook from the force of his coughing. God, he didn't realise how much smoke he mistakenly inhaled. Thank fuck for Grant.

"We can't have you spazzing out from smoke in the future, you need a suit like mine."

"Don't want one." Jason grunted while he struggled to even out his breathing.

"You need it. That hoodie isn't protecting you from shit." With that, Grant sent Jason's red hooded top a dark look as if it was the duplicitous villain here. While they walked, Uncle J's School For Aspiring Killers reached for the heavens as it went up in a blinding storm of fire.

Above the crackle and roar of the blaze, Jason was sure he caught the tail end of maniacal laughter, filled with glee a final time.

* * *

 

It was decided. Or Grant decided for Jason. In the field, he was wearing something with a little fucking protection against the things they would definitely encounter. Bullets, knives, glass, explosions, etcetera.

They met each other in the middle, he could keep that cutesie red hoodie of his but he sure as hell wasn't stopping there. Jason took a liking to a certain jacket they came across on the back of a recently dead man who worked for Mask. It was sleek black leather, bold red snaking up from the hem and tracing the length of the zipper, all the way to a sudden halt at the neckline.

It was padded with kevlar on the inside, Grant approved it.

Upfront and without waver, Jason outright refused to don a facial covering anything like Grant's. Instead, he opted to wear a peculiar mask that covered the lower half of his face, red steel. Jesus, message received, Jason likes that colour. Should a smoke bomb go off in his face, the built-in air filters would protect him, at least.

They were not repeating that school fire incident.

"Alright, listen up, you fucking pricks!" With two quick pulls of the trigger, Jason fired at the ceiling to capture the attention of everyone who hadn't yet noticed his arrival.

Grant made no move to take his spotlight, he watched from the sidelines as Jason made his presence known among the mob bosses he lured to this warehouse with one or other form of bait. Each of these men and women owned a portion of Gotham city but none more than Black Mask himself. But he was dead now so who's the wiser?

"All you motherfuckers work for _me_ now." Another round of bullets into the ceiling to drive home the weight of his words. Anyone who might object would be suicidal but as Murphy would have it, some were not so easily convinced.

"Who the fuck are you, kid?" A man snapped, picking himself off the ground the gunfire made him throw himself to. He gathered himself and his dignity up, dusting the dirt away.

"And what business do you have bursting in here, swinging that gun around like you know how to handle the fucking thing?"

Jason's jaw set, his mismatched eyes became slivers of cold anger fixed on the foolish man. Was he so stupid that he didn't see the danger he tempted? Jason didn't come here with a white flag and olive branch. His intentions were on the nose.

In anticipation, Grant smiled to himself. This was bound to get good.

"You people own a fourth of Gotham," Jason began, the air of authority in his voice filling up every inch of the room.

"And up until now, you've taken scraps from Black Mask's table. Well, I'm here to let you know Mask is dead." He tossed an unmistakable leather mask to their feet, their eyes tracking it as it fell. It was a show of power they couldn't ignore.

"Which means you're my bitches now." Jason finished with a sharpening glare to the gang leaders, adjusting the '47 across his shoulders. With his hood drawn and the added layers of the kevlar, Jason looked more intimidating than the teen just shy of eighteen years truly was.

Or maybe it was just Grant who thought Jason, as he was without the gear, wasn't scary.

That defiant stupid man gave deliberate sarcastically slow claps, approaching Jason by a step every time he did.

"Big words there, pup, but if you think for one moment we're going to let some _child_ walk in here and act like he owns the place, then you've got another thing-"

Jason slammed the blade of his buck knife beneath the man's chin, burying it deep in his brain. A small choked noise made it past his lips, shocked eyes bolting wide before he slumped to Jason's feet, dead as a doornail.

The room fell into stunned silence but Grant only smirked. _That's my boy._

" _Now_ ," Jason spoke up again and this time, everyone listened, no one interrupted him.

"If you fuckers would like to listen to me, I have a business proposition. You either do everything I say exactly the way I say it or line up and get ready to die."

"Who are you?" Someone braved up enough to ask and for a moment, Jason fell silent, chewing on his lip while he thought. Grant had been wondering also, what was he going to call himself? The name Jason translated 'to heal', it wasn't intimidating by itself. He needed a mantle to strike fear.

"Red Hood." He at last stated and Grant raised his brows, a tad surprised. Red Hood, huh? Interesting choice considering the school used to be home to a group of balaclava-clad individuals called the Red Hoods, the people who came in after and made sure Joker's students' murder sprees didn't see the light of day. They made things, people, just vanish. Poof, never there.

For one reason or other, they didn't stay in operation long past the point of the school's opening. They were a mysterious bunch.

Grant didn't know why he picked it, maybe it was because outside of their existence, close to nothing was known about the Hoods, not even in the criminal underworld. No one knew them, no one knew where the line was. It was smart, Jason could build image off that.

And apparently, it was already working as at the mention of those two words, Red and Hood, the gangsters adopted expressions of solemnity.

A previously fearsome woman among them swallowed heavily.

"What is it that you want, Red Hood?"

* * *

 

The deranged _child_ went off the rails and that alone wasn't enough, Jason was hellbent to drag all of Gotham City with him.

Dick was trying to catch him, ever since their initial encounter. He needed to find him before he did something they couldn't undo, but the kid was elusive. Jason was like smoke, drifting between his fingers whenever he tried to latch onto him.

But his influence in the city was certainly great enough to notice, it had to be him who turned that building to charred rubble. It wasn't a coincidence all this hell was breaking free now that Jason reared his head again.

Dick tracked his movements all around Gotham, Jason was doing nothing to keep his goings unseen. He was acting fast but not recklessly, whatever he was doing, he'd thought it out. So far, Jason made every major gang bend to his will and killed the leaders of the ones that defied him, taking what's theirs anyway.

He was dangerously efficient, Dick had no idea how he threw his weight around like that when he had no reputation built upon the backs of intimidation and fear. Other than Dick, no one in this city knew who he was.

But maybe that was part of the fear factor, no one knew where he drew the line or if he even had one. There was no saying what Jason was capable of.

Rumour had it that Red Hood, as he'd cutely nicknamed himself, was working with someone. Dick's informant from a besieged gang said, quote, 'looked like a younger Deathstroke'. There was only one person he knew who vaguely matched that description and that was Grant Wilson, Ravager.

 _Him_ Dick did know where to find. He wasn't discreet, he didn't care who caught wind of the places he like to frequent.

That particular night, at quarter to two am, Grant could be placed at a skeevy dive bar in the worst part of town,  conversing with a big boobed mixologist at the bar. She was giving him doey eyes, biting her lip and giggling at every word from his mouth.

Over the bar, she leaned closer to whisper something into his ear that made him grin. If Dick was right about guessing her age then she was ten years his senior.

"A moment, Grant?" Dick sat next to him before he got a reply, sliding one arm onto the smooth polished surface the bartender also leaned on. She gave him a dirty glare for cutting in.

"Who the fuck are you?" Grant turned in his seat, frowning at him but his abnormally pale blue eyes stayed low in caution, relaxed and easy going. Clearly, he had a few that night.

"That's not important. Where's Jason?" He cut straight to the point, no cushioned interrogative process. Even in civvies when no one recognised him, he couldn't help but feel on edge in a place like this.

"Not here?" Grant suggested with a shrug, smirking, raising a shot to down the golden contents in one gulp, balancing the glass atop a stack of similar glasses forming a pyramid in front of him, steadily rising heavenward.

His police training forced Dick to disapprovingly think about Grant not being old enough to drink. He pushed the thoughts aside, they weren't important here.

"I know you know where he is. I have to find him." Dick pressed harder, more insistently but obviously, it wasn't going through. He had to remind himself this was an eighteen-year-old he was talking to, a literal fucking kid. The psychos just got younger.

"If Jaybird wanted to be found you'd know where he is."

"He's a dangerous lunatic, Grant. Surely even you can see that. He's going to kill a lot of people if no one stops him. _Please_ just help me." It was a last-ditch effort, appeal to a part of Grant that might be human but his answer was a mock scoff. Like father, like son.

"There's no one in this city worth saving, _Grayson_."

"How do... How do you know who I am?"

"How do you think? Jay told me to be on the lookout in case some pretty gypsy swung by askin' questions 'bout him."

" _Romani_." Dick growled, pulling his widened fingers into a fist, nails running over the knife marks on the bar top.

"And if you really care about Jason, you'll help me stop him before someone else does. He's going to get _seriously_ hurt."

"Oh _darling_ ," Grant gave a low humourless laugh, suddenly close to completely sober.

" _You're_ the one who fucked Jason's head up. You can only blame Joker so far, he's not the person who gave Jaybird personality-altering brain damage."

"What happened to Jason's on _me_ , I get that, okay? I just don't want anyone else to die."

"Dude, I couldn't stop Jason if I wanted to. You're in way over your head." With a smirk, Grant tended to the final shot. Dick cursed himself for expecting anything more from a Wilson.

" _Breaking news,_ "

Dick turned his attention to the wall mounted TV where a flustered looking woman spoke up.

" _A series of pipe bombs have been set off in courts, fire and police stations, killing tens of officers_. _Every gang residing in Gotham has taken up arms against law enforcement, resulting in a grotesque massacre downtown. Furthermore, the gangs are blocking all the exits out of the city, preventing anyone from leaving. The GCPD are doing everything they can to resolve this uprise with minimum force but until then, all citizens are urged to stay away from the afflicted areas-"_

The crack of a bullet split the air in two before she finished her sentence. Dick jumped, rapidly glancing around himself for the source of the noise only to realise it was happening on the screen. _Live_. The news reporter's jaw dropped when lead invaded her skull, speckles of blood hitting the camera lens and she slumped off her seat.

Dick rose quick. He needed to get down there but froze when a new player entered right after the woman was shot, strolling onto the screen as if he belonged there.

Jason.

Dick glared at him as he casually sat behind the reporter's desk, placing his boots on the surface. He was wearing his trademark hood, a leather jacket but nothing over his face that could hide his lopsided grin.

" _Ignore that bitch_ ," Jason said, leaning back in the chair. The footage wasn't quite focusing on him, shaking slightly as the cameraman did. Jason had a gun on the table - Dick's old gun - he held the reins here. And by that smug look, he fucking knew it.

" _Hi, hello_ , _m'name's_ _Red Hood_ ," he gave an absent wave. " _I'm the person responsible for this chaos you're experiencing and come dawn, I'm sicing my thugs on ya'll. Everyone, men, women, children. You can't leave Gotham so unless you wanna die, you'll have to get your hands dirty_. _Kill or be killed is a simple rule and the only one that counts right now."_

Jason's eyes flitted to someone off screen, the cameraman?

" _Wh - why are you doing this_?" He asked and Jason's grin broadened. Fuck, he looked so crazy.

" _Why_?" Jason scoffed like he couldn't believe the question. " _Because every damn piece of shit in this city deserves to die. No one's off-limits since death doesn't mean a fucking thing. It isn't even permanent. They lied to you when they said that."_

With that, Jason sat up straight and stared directly into the camera, into Dick's eyes it seemed and a chilled shiver went down his spine.

" _You all think I'm some depraved monster because I'm not afraid of murder but we're all murderers, I'm just showing you that. If you can't run and you can't hide, you have to kill_. _So let's have us a little purging, shall we?"_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jason, honey, you may not like the word crazy but you're it.


	9. As Outlaws Do

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jason abandoned the guns, slamming them back into his holsters and in the same movement tore a grenade loose, plucking the pin in his teeth and throwing it at her. The blast knocked them both back, Jason landed near the end of the carriage and took the opportunity to drop down between it and the locomotive. The wheels rattled violently on the track below, zipping at a blurring speed beneath where he stood on the iron coupling holding the train together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So random Jason Todd fact, did you know originally DC planned to have him killed off with AIDS? Fucking AIDS! A 13-15 year-old-child!

" _Well_ ," Hands gripping the edge of the bar top, Grant pushed his seat back and rose once the broadcast ended.

"I better go supervise my boy. Make sure he doesn't get himself shot again."

" _Wait_." Dick bolted after and caught his arm.

"Jason trusts you, you can get through to him."

Clicking his tongue, Grant turned with all the time in the world, an arrogant half smirk playing on his lips. 

"Don't wanna."

"You heard what he said!" Over his shoulder, Dick gestured to the black TV screen. He was on his last nerve with these deranged teenagers on a murder spree. Where the fuck were their parents?!

"Jason is going to set all of Gotham on itself in a couple of hours.  _Hundreds_  of people are going to die! Can't you see your friend is utterly  _demented_?" At that point, Grant had it to his limit. He ripped his arm free with Dick being able to do nothing to hold onto him, not when Grant sized up to him, totally disregarding personal space and fuck, he was tall for his age, the sword and guns certainly made him no less frightening. He backed the good detective into a wall.

"I fucking know he's crazy,  _alright_?" He bit. "I  _know_. I can see that. Jason is worse than Joker at this point and he's not going to stop until Gotham is a smouldering crater." His glare deepened but Dick could see it, just how much he believed what he said. They were true words. 

Biting his lip, he stared Grant directly into his eyes when he pushed away from the wall, the teen giving him a few steps of room.

"And you still won't stop him?" 

"Don't mistake me for someone who cares about Gotham. It's never been anything but shit to me and to Jay.  _You_  took my best friend away from me for  _four_  years and now you want me to  _help_  you?" His teeth ground until his jaw trembled, fists balling. How quickly his facade of carelessness let up. Grant and Jason, Dick was beginning to see the similarities between these two. They were dangerous together, Ravager had always been a stick of dynamite but then along came a spark in the form of Jason Todd. These kids had a vicious streak a mile long.

"I'm not asking for me. Do it for the innocent people who have no part in this, Grant." 

"I can't believe how naive you are." He shook his head, struck by a case of mild disbelief. Without a second word to that argument, he decided to retract his presence from the conversation, turning on his heel yet again with an air about him that told Dick if he tried to stop him, then he'd have a caved in skull to think about.

"I'm not helping you. Get it through your head." 

In solemnity, Dick watched him go, make the door bang twice, and disappear into the night. Well, almost disappear. He switched his phone on and watched the tracker he planted beep to life on the screen, heading through Gotham. 

* * *

 

The engine of the jacked motorbike roared, tearing the air through ragged when Jason darted through the city, breaking every speed limit and vehicular safety law. He took a sharp turn into Corinthian street, the wind threw his hood off and whipped his hair but the blast of passing scenery howling in his ears didn't drown out the screech of sirens. After his little video message at the Gotham News building, the cops thought they could catch him and to that, he said let them try. Let them fucking try.

With a twist of his wrist, he pumped more throttle into her, calculating the speed he needed in his head seconds before the oncoming traffic was in his path. He zipped through it with several close calls and horns blaring at him. A glance thrown over his shoulder revealed the cruisers turning to take an alternative route, they couldn't fit through the racing cars as snugly as his bike could. But the stunt didn't buy Jason a lot of time.

The atmosphere in Gotham was restless tonight, tense. In the wake of his threat, everyone was running around like headless chickens and the panic was so thick he could taste it. He loved this. 

Jason was well aware he wasn't in the clear but the squad of police cars appearing on the road ahead of him drove the point home harder. Behind the cover of his mouth guard, he smirked. Nice of them to make it fun. 

A cop tried to run him over; he leaned out of the way and the bike jolted when its wheels went over the curb, bolting down the abandoned sidewalk. They opened fire at him. A bullet came close to nicking his neck, another bounced off his ride's exhaust pipe. Time to get a little cover. 

The entrance to a subway loomed close, nearing with the passing of every rapid second. Jason leaned far back, yanking the handlebars, levelling out his weight when the front tyre came off the floor in preparation for the steep flight of stairs. Vibrations went through him but it was only for a heartbeat before he was flat on the ground again, driving at 190 mph. Jason couldn't stop himself, he urged more speed into her until his vision couldn't keep up with his surroundings. 

Only two cops were brave or suicidal enough to follow him down, racing after in single file in fear of falling onto the train track. Jason didn't share in their caution, he stayed on the edge to avoid the pillars the cars could just barely fit through.

Another round of shots was taken at him but these pussy cops were afraid to kill him, even after being made aware of his plan for Gotham. If he fell and hit the ground at this speed, his skin and muscle would be ripped off his bones but his death would do nothing to impact the pieces already in motion. Surely they knew that?

Even still, it wasn't in Jason's itinerary to be dead again. 

Oh no, he wasn't dying for a while.

The way above ground was less than twenty seconds away, the cruisers couldn't follow him up there, he was practically home free but he gave himself the taste of victory too soon. All at once, orange light flooded his eyes and the intense heat came after, making him swerve to miss whatever it was and nearly lose his balance. It took Jason a moment to register that someone just hurled a  _fireball_  at him. A fucking  _fireball_.

He had a million questions when a humanoid figure made of flames blocked his way out, flying in the air with another projectile to throw at him on the ready. What the actual fuck?

Jason braked fast or he would have hit it, leaning on one leg with his fist trembling around the throttle as he glanced to the two cars pulling up behind and the thing in front. He was surrounded.

His teeth grit when he stared back at the burning woman. He could tell it was a woman now,  an African-American chick with glowing, pulsating green eyes boring into Jason from her higher vantage point. Her skin looked like magma or the sun's surface, too hot to touch, too hot to wrap your head around, every pore exuding fire that coursed down her body without damaging it. The flames were like a river, flowing through her as if they had a symbiosis.

The gravity of his situation just became a bit more severe than Jason had initially estimated.

"Stand down or I  _will_  hurt you." The woman ordered in a loud voice, unafraid to use it, raising a fireball in her hand with the unspoken but received threat that she would turn him into ash.

Eyes narrowing, Jason considered his very few and bleak options. He couldn't backtrack or get past her without fourth-degree burns. She wasn't about to give him long to think.

"Do you  _want_  to die, Red Hood?" She demanded, glaring with her teeth bared. It didn't appear as if she actually wanted to restrain herself. He couldn't help but think he'd personally offended her somehow. 

"Not particularly. I just got back." He replied dully, looking for a way out while he bought himself some time talking. He thinks he may have one...

"Then get off the motorcycle and put your hands up."

"Fuck you, bitch." It was probably suicide that he twisted the throttle, the bike leapt into motion and he drove it straight off the platform, onto the tracks below. The impact of his wheels hitting the gravel sent a shock through Jason, he didn't pay it a blink of attention, careering down the tunnel that was black only for a moment before the woman darted in pursuit, filling the darkness with a searing and dangerous illumination.

Energy blasts struck the ground on either side of him, he swerved to not get hit but there wasn't a lot of room to move on a fucking train track. Jason felt the scorch of her heat on his back, she was on his heels, practically atop him and if he was caught then he was royally screwed. He didn't doubt it.

What little he'd seen of her face, she resembled that policewoman who he'd seen with Grayson that day at the hospital, after Joker shot him. He only remembered her name because he'd thought it was funny at the time. Kori Anders. Was detective Grayson really formerly partnered up with an inferno-inducing meta chick? Son-of-a-bitch was full of surprises.

Shit! Kori smartened up and abandoned the fireballs, shooting a thick blazing column out of her fists that nearly melted Jason's jacket to his back. It was like hell in this subway tunnel right now, sweat poured off his body, stung in his eyes and what's worse, the sensors on the bike were going haywire with the overheating engine. Another ten degrees and the pipes would start melting. 

There weren't enough curse words in Jason's vocabulary to describe what was going through his head.

That pop-hiss would be the radiator bursting. Fucking beautiful. He was really enjoying this thing where he forced more speed into a bike that could blow up at any given second. Speed was about the only thing he had on this bitch and he had a feeling even that wasn't so. She could definitely fly faster than she was. 

Cursing under his breath, Jason ripped his weapon from his holster and fired it at her over his shoulder. He wasn't too disappointed when the bullets did nothing to Kori as he'd not been expecting results but he was trying everything to lose her. Not gonna happen something told him.

Just as his bike was about to give out in the next minutes, Jason's saving grace came in the form of the thunder of a train approaching on the neighbouring tracks. The lights blasted them both in the face and the whistle blared a deafening wail that rattled their eardrums. It was tearing towards them. 

The conductor had a shocked face on, that much Jason caught of him before he ditched his ride in a rather self-destructive move to get rid of Kori. He stood in the saddle, holding her steady until he jumped at the train side. Jason grunted when he hit it, managing to catch the edges of a window and not fall to his death.

Inside, the woman sitting beside to the window screamed in horror, he couldn't exactly blame her but was she afraid of him appearing so suddenly or the flaming crazy bitch who did a U-turn to storm after yet again, this time in the opposite direction. 

Quickly finding handholds, Jason dragged himself onto the train's roof but the blast of air threatened to throw him off right away, whipping his clothes, messing with his balance. He was sort of beginning to regret giving Grant the night off. 

Twenty times faster than the motorcycle, they were out of the tunnels in what felt like the blink of an eye and looks like Jason had been right about Kori's speed, she was keeping up with a train no problem. With there being civilian passengers at risk here, she refrained from firing at him but her expression was almost more lethal. She was  _pissed_. If glares could kill, he'd be a goner.

With a thud, Kori found her footing on the opposite end of the carriage, her fire dying down but not entirely. Okay... now what? 

"You blew the precinct up, Hood," Kori snarled viciously, sparks dancing from her eyes.

"You killed my friends." So there was the tripwire to her loathing towards him. Jason was glad he only had one friend and Grant was tough to kill, he didn't have these waste-of-time problems the way she did.

Jason tipped his chin up a fraction, regarding her unsympathetically.  Did she expect him to apologise? Not his cup of tea.

"They probably deserved it." 

Kori lunged, sparing a warning and she went straight with a punch. Jason jumped back, against the rushing wind trying to shove him into her, ducking beneath the second blow and landing one of his own into her side. It hurt him more than her, she was solid muscle although Jason stood half convinced it was stone he struck. He may as well have not even hit her for all the good it did; Kori grabbed him by his scruff and hurled him across the roof. She did that like his weight wasn't shit.

Jason hit the metal once. Ouch. And again. Fuck. He rolled but caught himself before he would have fallen, quickly rediscovering his feet. It didn't take a genius to immediately  realise he wasn't beating her hand-to-hand.  She was on fire, he couldn't touch her and her strength appeared to be triple his. 

The gun didn't do shit earlier yet he unclipped his twin berettas and started firing, aiming at her chest, face, abdomen, anywhere where they should do damage. The throwback, every bullet the guns spat out, it sent vibrations through Jason's arms. Kori approached, he took a step back, she came closer, scorching the train's roof behind her.

He was  _dead_.

Jason abandoned the guns, slamming them back into his holsters and in the same movement tore a grenade loose, plucking the pin in his teeth and throwing it at her. The blast knocked them both back, Jason landed near the end of the carriage and took the opportunity to drop down between it and the locomotive. The wheels rattled violently on the track below, zipping at a blurring speed beneath where he stood on the iron coupling holding the train together.

Kicking the door off its hinges, Jason went into the carriage at a pace that was reasonable considering what sort of beast chased him. Kori wasn't damaged badly by the grenade. She was a being spewing fire from her pores, what did he expect?

People stared at Jason in confusion and surprise when he jogged down the aisle but those expressions turned to outright fear when that burning bitch appeared at the destroyed door. They were afraid and not even running from her. Jason wasn't afraid, just increasingly more and more aware that he was fucked if he didn't lose her and now.

In here, Kori wouldn't dare to use her pyrokinesis but she wasn't any less terrifying when she ran to get him. On foot, at least, Jason was faster. The next door burst open under the impact of a kick to the lock, it lead to the dining carriage. Perfect.

He pulled things into her path in the hopes of slowing her down, shoved a waiter at her, even threw a baby that she stalled to catch. The mother screamed when Jason snatched her offspring and hurled it across space. All these people would be dead come dawn, he didn't have a lot of concern for their lives. 

From a window, it came to his attention that another train was passing this one. Thinking fast, he shot at the glass until it burst outward, quickly pulling himself through and he was outside again, hands on the edge of the window the only thing keeping him on the carriage side. The wind was sandpaper on his skin, humming like a swarm of bees in his ear, tears blurring his vision but he managed to time it just right. Jason kicked off the train, propelling himself far enough to catch the next one only just. 

He muffled a noise of pain with his teeth clamped on his lip when his side smacked painfully into the steel edge of the roof he struggled to haul himself onto. Fuck, his shoulder residing in its socket was almost a thing of the past after that stunt. He rolled flat onto his back, took a heartbeat to pant away the pain before he sat up and checked to see where Kori was. She wouldn't be far behind. Now to change that. 

Another grenade came free, he tossed it at the tracks of the train he just got off, raising an arm to shield his eyes when they blew up almost at once. The brakes screeched like tortured banshees when the conductor tried to save them going off the rails but he wouldn't be able to, they were flying fast towards their deaths. 

Kori made the decision Jason hoped she would. She soared out the carriage, ready to blow him to hell when she saw his handiwork. It wasn't a question for her what she would do, who she was going to choose, she forgot he existed in favour of attempting to save the train. He doubted she would be able to, it was stronger than her surely? 

Either way, his ride didn't stick around long enough for him to learn the outcome. It rocketed through the city under his siege, right as the sun was beginning to rise and it excited him to think soon, he could set his hounds on the people. Dick thought he was simply evil, a devil child as he'd once put it, a mind-controlled monster, all those good things but  _no_. If it was the last thing Jason did, he would prove to the detective that nothing compelled murder like the desire not to die. When you're cornered, you're lethal, you'll do anything to live. 

As a kid, he did everything Joker and Black Mask wanted because he was afraid they would hurt him. Dick wouldn't understand a mindset like that until he witnessed everyone experience it. Maybe experience it himself? That was another thing Jason would ensure.

He managed to take a few breaths to calm his spiking adrenaline levels before his stop came up; a bridge that would cut him in half if he was standing when they went through it. Bracing himself when he rose, Jason took a running step and a somersault saw him land on his feet, on the stone railing with a jounce. He didn't stay there long, he stumbled down, onto the bridge itself with his hands on his knees, panting. It was a shock how quickly everything around him stopped moving at the speed of a bullet and his balance didn't adjust at once but when it did, he went on his way again.

The streets were empty, no people or cars, the citizens were in their homes, hiding in preparation for the moment Gotham's gangs would flood the city and kill anyone in sight unless of course, they fought back and won. Kill or be killed, wasn't that the rule the school enforced and Joker carved into his brain? He was applying it to real life, wouldn't daddy be proud?

Jason must've injured his leg during that skirmish with Kori, he was burdened by a small limp that although not very painful, was definitely slowing him down. Nothing was broken, he probably just pulled a muscle but that wasn't ideal.  The cops were still after him and Kori wouldn't be occupied forever, he needed to get out of plain view. 

As he thought that, a cruiser appeared at his six and he already had a gun ready, even when it slowed to a near halt beside Jason. His weapon was in his hand, he was about to give the officer a third eye socket until a glance from the corner of his eye revealed nothing more menacing behind the wheel than his pet Grant.

"I've been looking everywhere for you, blad." Grant said, motioning for Jason to get in. Though clad in his ash grey uniform, he wasn't wearing his mask, it hung around his neck and his hair was windblown, a dark cut slicing his cheek open and he sported a split lip. Jason could guess where he got those injuries from, the police car he jacked had bullet holes in the windshield, the seats were drenched in drying blood and the passenger side door was missing, ripped clean off the hinges. Whatever fight he was involved in on the way here, Jason was guessing the other guys looked far worse.

"G, I could kiss you right now." Jason said when he got in where the door should have been, grateful as hell for the ride. He did not want to worsen his limp. 

"That's gonna cost you ten dollars," Grant smirked, eyes on the road as he adjusted the gears and pulled off the sidewalk. The car quickly picked up the pace and they were easily pushing 80 mph in moments.

"Where to?" 

Jason was glad his friend asked because he had a destination in mind that would be the perfect place to blow the whistle and start his experiment. He couldn't help a smile of anticipation.

"Take us to city centre, would you?"

"Right on." He took the next turn to the mayor's place, gliding through empty streets like they were the only people here.

Jason went about reloading his guns, dropping the empty clips carelessly onto the floor while he slapped new ones in. Altogether, the transaction took less than ten seconds, courtesy of that practise he used to do with Grant's dad's gun back in the day. Little did he know he'd ever use that practice. 

"That ex-cop you told me about came asking 'bout you." Grant mentioned, responsible enough of a driver to always keep his gaze riveted on the road ahead. 

"Oh, did he? Lemme guess, he wanted to know where I am, tried to convert you and looked unlawfully pretty doing it?"

He nodded.

"Sums it up."

"He probably planted a tracker on you.  _Here_ ," Jason straightened and with a brief glance from Grant, located and plucked the tracer from his sword's sheath. It was tiny, easier than breathing to miss, especially when it was on your back. Jason examined the device, turning his hand slowly while his eyes narrowed on it. He might keep this intact.

"What're you doing?" Grant raised an inquisitive brow when Jason clipped the tracker onto his own holster. 

"He wants to talk to me, it goes both ways. I like it when he begs me." A smile teetered on his lips when Jason remembered how desperately the detective had wanted to help him, offered his time and resources, anything it took because he thought there was something wrong with Jason that could be fixed.

He could tell Grant was looking at him with an unreadable emotion. It felt a bit like concern at his demented smile that sparked from nothing the other could see. 

The mayor's big white building was just around the corner, almost definitely surrounded by cops protecting the mayor himself but they wouldn't be a problem. It was all an undisturbed drive until the second something landed on the hood. Crash. Grant slammed the breaks on so hard they both jolted and Jason caught himself so the dashboard wouldn't, gun in hand before he checked on what just happened.

"Hiya, boys!"

Jason didn't know what he was looking at. A girl Joker was waving at him from where she stood on the car, grinning widely even without the lipstick. A torn sleeveless trench coat, green, hung around her extremely narrow frame, a purple crop top that said 'daddy's gurl' leaving all her ribs visible, sticking out of her skin sharply. She looked anorexic. Red hair was stabbing at the air in a faux-hawk cut. Whoever this girl was, she'd painted herself to look like Joker right down to black around her eyes and the exact shade of lipstick. Hanging loosely from her hand was a crowbar with a knife taped to the claw end, both sides dripping blood and matted with hair. It was an effective if crude weapon. 

"Jesus Christ, Duela," Grant's breathing was uneven from the fright she gave him, both hands on the wheel he momentarily pressed his face to before he straightened. 

"What the fuck are you  doing here?" He inquired when Jason was still asking himself the who and why questions. It appeared that Grant knew who the girl was and now that he mentioned her name, Jason might too. She did look a lot like Duela Dent from anatomy class.

"Whaddya think, Rav?" With a flourish, she hopped off the hood and danced around to the door Grant was already pushing open. Sceptically, Jason followed him out, still ready with his gun. 

"I want in on what you and Hood are doing! I saw it on the news and it sounds like a lotta fun. Bet'cha could use a woman's touch when it comes to mass murder." Duela tipped her head with a smile that could have been pretty if detached from the greasepaint and openly burning insanity in her eyes. She winked at Jason when their gazes met.

"I'm real handy with pretty much any weapon - even killed a trio of cops with a ball of yarn on the way here. Me thinks you boys could really use a girl like me." 

Jason and Grant exchanged glances. With Kori having joined the fight against them, they needed everyone they could get on their side. Duela attended the same school as them, she knew how to kill, especially if she copied more off Joker than just his appearance.

But Jason knew nothing else about her, definitely not if he could place any trust in her.

Grant caught onto his conflict with the speed of a mind reader.

"I've worked a few gigs with her in the past, Jaybird, we can trust her." His tone was assuring, he regarded him with sincere eyes but Jason remained unsure. He had his issues warming at all to people, no matter if it was beneficial.  Maybe this one time, he might trust Grant knew better.

He gave a small nod of his head and Duela whooped in excitement, throwing her arms up in the air. That's where they were for a little bit before they came crashing around Jason, pinning his limbs to his sides and smothering him in kisses in between rapid thank yous.

"Oh thanks so much, JayJay! You won't regret it!" Jason yelped when he was bent backwards over the car hood, Duela on top, straddling him, pressing a hard kiss onto his lips.

Grant heard his silent screams for help, he dragged Duela off Jason but not to his own benefit, she tried to mouth rape him too, only he was a foot taller and she hit his collarbone.

"We're like a merry band of outlaws now!" She sang happily when briefly she pulled back.

"It's dawn, Jay. Wanna call the war hounds?" Grant asked while he ignored that Duela assaulted his chest, smearing it in red lip marks. Her leg was hooked around his, really losing herself in the one-sided make out session.

Jason nodded while he sat up on the car, with the back of his hand wiping lipstick off his face. There was a flare gun in his thigh holster, he took it and loaded a cartridge. His men knew to be on the lookout for a flare in the sky, it would be visible against the dawn gloom, it was the cue to attack.

The gun felt heavy in his palm, heavy as the weight of the lives it would end. His finger slid into the trigger, he stalled for a moment but not out of hesitation, he was just wondering what colour the flare would be.

Jason raised his arm toward the sky, ready to shoot when,

"Jason, stop!"

The crackle of fire eating the wind was the only forewarning to Kori finding him again but now, she dangled Nightwing by his arm as she flew. Well, Nightwing, Dick, Richard, Detective Grayson, guy had more names than the devil.

Grant unsheathed his sword, Duela readied whatever her crowbar-knife weapon was called, both ready for a fight that was bound to ensue.

Dick landed on his feet next to Jason, looking oh-so dashing in his mask and spandex thats tightness didn't leave a lot to the imagination.

Kori hovered by threateningly, a fireball ready to incinerate them with.

"Stop what you're doing, this is crazy!" Dick insisted in his last effort to get through.

"I am not fucking crazy."

"Kid, you're the walking definition."

Jason's teeth clicked when they set since Dick foolishly used that adjective he hated as if to purposefully get under his skin.

In a flash, he made to fire the gun but equally fast, an escrima stick smacked it from his hand, throwing it across the ground and leaving his fingers stinging from the blow. Jason winced, gripping his wrist with a glare.

That first punch Dick took instigated Duela and Grant, they went for Kori like a couple of attack dogs. A sword sang through the air, fire was thrown, it was  _on_.

Jason's eyes drifted from them to Dick, interlocking hard as steel while he was already reaching for his own murder weapon.  Both escrima sticks joined them, Dick wrapped his fists securely around while his gaze narrowed.

Didn't look like they were getting that conversation Jason had gotten his hopes up for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Huddles around Jason, Grant, and Duela* Fuck off! These are my outlaws, let me have them! *Gollum snarl* Mine...


	10. Catharsis

**my bored ass drew some Outlaws**

* * *

 

Joker did Jason one favor in the sense that he made sure he'd have the physical prowess, psychological endurance and drive to keep fighting until dead if he had to. It certainly came in handy, let's just say Detective Grayson had sharpened his combat skills in the past four years. 

Grunting, Jason blocked an escrima stick on a metal pipe he picked up from somewhere, spine forced to bend back under the pressure Dick applied, both of them glaring when their gazes aligned, teeth bared. If those iron batons he was waving around hit Jason, they'd leave him with broken bones. In this compromising position, Dick had the upper hand, he hooked his leg around Jason's and pulled in an attempt to knock him down. The teen dropped the bar, saving himself with a backflip that left a lovely window to kick his opponent upside the head. His jaws clamped shut on the tip of his tongue while Jason gained the distance he needed to empty what was left in his guns.

It was satisfying to send bullets at the truly lovely detective but it would have admittedly been more enjoyable if a single had hit. Lightning fast, the shots burst into sparks when they ricocheted off Dick's batons, moving in nameless blurring shapes so not a single passed through. Huh. There's a trick that would've been useful when Jason was a kid.

The triggers clicked uselessly when the clips ran empty, Jason hurled the now useless pieces of iron at Dick while his mind raced for his next move. He didn't have the advantage of advanced combat training for the past four years, the detective could overpower him if he didn't play his cards right. Joker's school's equivalent of PE was teaching kids the ins and outs of a fight but that information would only get him so far. 

As if by a God call, Kori sent Grant's sword flying from his hand with a brutal kick and it hit the ground next to Jason, point down, almost impaling him. He didn't pause to think about how close that was, snatching the weapon up in both hands and swinging it at Dick's unprotected side. Figures, he blocked that too but Jason kept the blows coming,  striking at any window of opportunity with deft aim that would have been fatal if he had any more useless of an opponent. If he had an hour to spare, Jason would drag this fight out to his own enjoyment but the longer he procrastinated, the more time he gave his enemies to find a resolve.

"This is what Joker wants you to do!" Dick's voice was almost drowned out by the sharp clang of metal hitting metal, painful vibrations reverberating through their weapons and into their bones but it all faded to background static.

"He wants you to hurt and kill as many people as possible." 

"Would you  _fucking_  accept that I can think for myself?" Jason tried to cut his head off shortly in the wake of ducking a swing with a sharp twist of his body. They continued exchanging hits and holding up both ends of the conversation.

"You live what you've learned, Jason." Dick grit, jaw clenched, muscles shaking under the strain of his escrima sticks being crossed with the sword between them, inching toward his face. Jason forced more strength through his arms to  _just_  cut him already.

"Oh yeah?" He bit. "Learn  _this_!" If Dick didn't have that chest plate, Jason's knee would have shattered his ribs. He yelped, thrown back some steps, chest exposed and vulnerable. Jason raised the blade to turn him into two detectives, he would have dealt serious damage if  _Kori_  hadn't fucking intervened. 

"Don't you dare touch him, you demented brat!" She threw the closest thing she could reach at him,  _Ravager_  in this case. By a fistful of his neck, Grant was snatched up like a ragdoll and turned into a projectile.  _Jesus_ , how strong was this chick? He collided into Jason with a smack that hurt them both and somehow they found themselves up against a tipped car, the only thing keeping them safe from a blast of fire. 

"You good?" Grant asked through a wince and heavy breaths, back pressed hard to the car. He was hurt, Jason couldn't see where or how badly but the pain was clear on his face, heavy on his features. Privileged as any meta, Grant had enhanced healing, he'd be fine. Nothing to be concerned over.

Jason ignored him, tossing a glance over their cover to Kori, she was throwing fireballs that were beginning to melt the car and Duela  was keeping Dick busy. She was good. A useful asset with obvious practise in a fight under her belt.

"We're outgunned," the Wilson boy continued, panting, flinching from a second wave of pain, hand trembling over his shoulder.

"We're not gonna beat that alien chick."

"Au contraire, my beautiful dusky skinned one, we need to try a different approach. You're better at hand-to-hand, handle Grayson, I'll handle Kori with Duela."

"Jay, wait, are you sure that's a good id-?"

Grabbing the remaining gun from Grant's holster, Jason leaped over the car, never intending to hear him out before he went for Kori.  Bullets wouldn't do anything, that was a given, he had something else in mind.

At being dismissed, Grant sighed under his breath, leaving to find wherever the hell his sword went so he could engage Grayson.

"JayJay!" Duela exclaimed with a broad happy grin when Jason joined her, just as she was landing on her feet from a series of backflips. Kori was persistently trying to toast them.

"Distract her." He ordered, jumping out of the crazy bitch's reach.

"Gotcha!" She gave a giggle when she flanked Kori, running around her in a wide berth, tossing cherry bombs. Kori was about to turn the Joker's Daughter into a smoking pile of ashes, she would have hit with that starbolt that took mere seconds to generate, but her turned back was what Jason needed. Gaining a higher vantage point from running up the length of a car, Jason launched himself off the roof, at the alien,  mid-flight aiming for her head. Kori immediately swung around and in the same movement, hurled fire up at Jason, a blast that - had it hit - would have been the end of him, no question. He twisted around it, seconds before thudding back onto the ground and by then, he got everything he needed from her.

The stray starbolt blew up above the tower blocks, tongues of fire spreading across the heavens far enough to be seen from any distance within relativity. Kori's and Dick's eyes shot wide, they saw what they did then and there. That would pass for a flare and alert Jason's thugs to begin the attack. Almost at once, the explosives rigged through the city went off and distant gunfire filled the streets with noise. 

A snake's grin spread over Jason's face, the taste of success sweeter than honey, too fixed on it to register Kori's scream of rage or care that she aimed to kill him. The fire would have consumed him whole had Grant not been on his guard, he grabbed Jason by the wrist and yanked him from harm's way in the nick of time, a blazing column smashing the asphalt where he'd stood. 

"Get your fucking hands off me." Jason violently shoved Grant back, almost enough to make him stumble and the confused pretty eyes he was given were too much for anyone to stay mad at.

Jason wasn't anyone. 

From across the space between them, Dick gave the teen a strange cold glare before he turned on his heel and took off in another direction, toward an explosion and there was no hope of him saving everyone, as he no doubt believed he could.

The detective wasn't going anywhere. They weren't done. Jason shot after, Kori lunged to stop him but was quickly countered by Grant and Duela. Jason just about heard them get ready to trade blows when,

"Hood!" Kori yelled. "Get back here or I'll rip his fucking arm off."

The teen paused reluctantly, stealing a glance of them over his shoulder. Raging, her hair burning, Kori had Duela disarmed on the floor, heel digging bruises into her back while she held a rough fistful of Grant's hair, twisting his arm to a fifty-degree angle. By the ungodly way his shoulder stuck out, it was half an inch from rolling out the socket. His teeth were set tight, wincing.

It hurt him. It hurt him a lot, Jason could see that in his eyes. His companions were trapped, they wouldn't be able to overpower Kori when she had them like this.

It probably should have taken him longer to decide.

"Deathstroke's son has a healing factor. He'll live."

Kori's glare set.

The grotesque wet snap of bone and choked scream didn't play on Jason's mind when he ran again, bolting in the direction the detective went. He didn't think Kori would follow, she would be too busy saving whoever she could from the gangs slaughtering everyone in sight.

All in all, this went well.

* * *

 

The moment of the signal, every part of the city lit up with screams and gunfire and more explosions than Dick could place. He knew with grim clarity before even trying, that he wouldn't be able to save everyone.

Kori and he would do what they could but it wouldn't be enough. Dick's chest constricted, all his practised control gradually failing and he was on the verge of panic. Thus far, he'd managed only to save a family from gunmen and other small things like that, which, in the grand scheme of things, made little to no difference.

"D'you know you have really pretty eyes?"

Dick was only half surprised that Jason shadowed him, what else would he have done when left alone? He turned on his heel toward the voice, the teen was standing casually by the alley wall, arms crossed while he rested his smiling face on one hand.

He was so nonchalant you'd think he hadn't just sentenced hundreds to die.

"Like....  _Really_  pretty. Too bad the mask gets in the way of the view." Jason informed him, tone innocent while his gaze was anything but. 

"Don't talk to me, Jason." He was grinding his jaws together when he said that. He'd never kill, not again, but he wouldn't lie and say he wasn't tempted to bash the kid over the head. It was the anger over the pointless destruction he caused talking but... That thing was better dead.

"Why? You gonna get mad and hurt me?"

"Don't entice me." Came the growl.

Jason, the  _brat_ , spread his arms apart to expose his chest, the cock of his head shifting his tangled bangs enough to reveal the scar they'd both rather forget happened.

"Have at me then. Shoot, hit, cut,  _whatever_  you want." He winked. Warily, Dick stared at him, at madness in its purest incarnation. Fuck, this kid went so wrong, so fast.

But fact is, what happened on Carnival Road four years ago had haunted Dick day and night. He still felt the warm tingle of blood and weightlessness of Jason's dead body in his arms.

He couldn't hurt him, even when he wasn't that brainwashed child anymore. He was all of Joker's insanity and methodicalness combined with Black Mask's drive to enact vengeance and suffering.

And Dick couldn't raise a hand to him.

Seeing he wouldn't budge, Jason pouted with the mischievous tug of a smile. 

"Aw, you won't hit me? Even after what I just did?"

"It's not gonna fix this, is it?"

"Not after I shot that news broadcaster in the head last night?"

Dick's fists clenched.

".... What about after I tortured your sweetheart to death?"

That.... That struck a chord. Dick felt an invisible blade push into the raw wounds Roy's death left in him. The reminder made him wince, why was he still not over that?

"We.... we're even, Jason." Swallowing, Dick difficultly admitted. An eye for an eye. Death for death.

"We aren't. We  _really_  aren't." He shook his head slowly, dropping his hands to his sides and he sauntered over. Jason stopped only when there was a foot between them. Though uncomfortable with the vibes coming off him, Dick wouldn't back away from a teenager.

"D'you ever think about it?" He asked, voice now low, soft, disturbingly so.

"About Roy dying? You saw the body, the wounds, must've hurt... Don'cha think?" He leaned in a fraction, Dick was sure he did it just to satisfy himself by hearing the way his heartbeat quickened. Yes, he thought about Roy every day too. It never got less torturous.

"He screamed when Sionis pushed that cigar into his eye, y'know. I cut his tongue out after that, straight from his mouth, forced my knife past his teeth  _and_..." With a grin, Jason made a guttural sound effect from somewhere in his throat.

"He just sorta... Choked on blood after that. It was pretty funny, in hindsight. He looked so confused like he couldn't understand what I just did to him."

Dick was sick, or he would be soon. His muscles trembled. He could see what Jason was doing, trying to instigate him to strike, and he should be able to turn off his emotions regarding it but.... But...

"And then Sionis just beat him with a studded whip for an hour or so. One blow for every operation you ruined. How many was that again?"

"One - one hundred and five." Dick's voice faltered with a waver.

"Yep, that's a lot. In the end, the skin was ripped off his back. I remember being able to see the white of his ribs, clean through the gashes. Really interesting."

"Jason,  _stop_."

" _Eventually_ , I just cut his throat. Didn't get it right the first time, I sliced his windpipe open - you ever heard anyone suffocate on air? It was just like-" Shamelessly, he mimicked rapid breathless panting, a glitter of merriment filling the colour of his eyes.

"But he was pretty dead at that point. He didn't really feel it, I don't think. I did get those arteries severed on the second try and it was all blissful quick bleeding from there on out. I think-"

Forcefully, Dick clamped a hand over his mouth.

" _Shut_. Up." 

Smug, Jason didn't make a move to pull back or away or in any direction, he was content to stand there and make eye contact. Dick felt his smile against his palm, even through his glove. Without checking with his brain, his other hand moved around Jason's throat, squeezing lightly around the hum of his pulse. Again, the teen was unconcerned, something on his face almost daring Dick to apply pressure.

It was impossible not to.

With a sharp jerk, he pushed Jason into the alley wall behind, sliding him up it until he needed to stand on his toes not to choke.  Still, his expression kept without a skitter of concern. He held the reins, they both knew that. Something about this kid somehow converted apparent defenselessness into a show of power.

Without a word, Dick pressed a throwing star to Jason's abdomen, nuzzled beneath his ribcage, cutting in a millimeter or two. Jason's jacket came with leather padding but he'd left it open, relying on nothing but his hoodie to protect his front and the deep red fabric was no worthy opponent for the sharpness of the blade.

"Remember last time you did this?" Jason inquired, voice a little scratchy from the stranglehold.

"Think back... four years, Carnival Road, 'I know what you did, you fucking devil child', two minutes before  _bam_." He tipped his head, almost  _playful_.

"Which one of us d'ya think's gonna walk away this time? You're not going to let me go free after this and I'll  _never_  leave you alone. Not until one of us is dead." Disturbingly gentle, Jason's hand closed around Dick's and moved the blade back to no resistance. He couldn't make the same mistakes that lead them here again. He just couldn't, no matter how Jason had actually earned himself a bullet this time around.

But that was the detective's doing. Jason wouldn't be like this if..... if Dick had been able to control his thirst for revenge all that time ago. So maybe it was how he was responsible for what Jason was now that made it impossible for him to do what any sane, rational person could have.

Sighing under his breath, hopeless, Dick stepped back from him, let him go. He didn't know what he was going to do with Jason. Just like he didn't know what to do with this catharsis he caused to prove some sick point of what desperation pushed a person to. He understood, long before Jason wove together this plan, wasn't his desperation to end Joker what brought them to this point?

Giving him a smile sparked by the knowledge of his victory, Jason stepped around him but Dick didn't turn to follow his movements, he stayed staring at the wall as if something in its rough brickwork could save them.

"So I was thinking, once I'm done with Gotham," Jason started again, this time over the subtle click of a bullet rolling into the barrel of his gun. 

"I'll move onto Bludhaven. Since you like it so much, I wanna see what's what."

"You're really going to continue killing hundreds of people over something that's between us?"

"It's about more than you and me at this point, detective. You can't bring something back from hell without expecting it to bring hell with it." 

"Poetic." 

"Isn't it?" Though neither faced the other, Dick heard by an undertow in his words exactly what sort of emotion was going through Jason. Finality. 

"You know I won't let you do the same in Bludhaven, don't you?" Dick asked, sombre, raising his eyes up the wall until he was looking at the dawn sky, tinged with an orange hue from the fires of not-so-distant destruction.  

"Yeah, I know." Small stones crunched under Jason's heel when he turned on it, extending the gun in his hand, aiming, and  _bang_. The shot ran loud, filled the street for miles but everything seemed to fall silent in its wake.

" _Now_... we're even." 

* * *

 

It took a while but when Jason returned to his cohorts, they hadn't moved from where he left them but this time, they were one alien short. There was no Kori anywhere to be seen. Where had she flown to, he wondered? 

The splatter of the detective's blood was drying on his face and neck as he approached, the feeling so wonderful that Jason might never wash it off. His body couldn't get rid of the small vibrations of adrenaline that came when he pulled the trigger. 

There was no elongated grin on Duela's face when he stepped into view and Grant didn't even look in his direction, sitting with his back to a burnt out car, holding his visibly shattered arm to his chest and taking in controlled breaths to stabilise the pain. Healing factor or no, the Wilson boy wasn't immune to feeling his wounds but whether or not he would admit it, he was a soldier-of-fortune, Jason was the person in charge here, Grant would get over it when he saw the zeroes on his paycheck.

Money fixed everything and after taking every cent Black Mask had, Jason could buy Grant a brand new arm if he wanted it.

"You get Grayson?" Grant darkly muttered, holding the ground in a cool captive glare and it didn't go unnoticed that he was speaking through his teeth. So he was upset that Jason made the obvious choice of pursuing the detective instead of ensuring his teammates didn't die. He did what anyone would have. He knew they'd be alright.

"I did." Jason responded, void of emotion, stopping a meter away to watch the ribbons of blood run down the broken limb. The sleeve of Ravager's suit was gone, Grant's arm was visibly busted in three places, his shoulder, elbow and wrist, the worst of it centring around the shards of bone stabbing at the air through his horribly bruised and lacerated bicep. Kori wasn't kidding when she promised to rip that off.

If Jason didn't know he was going to recover, he would have been guilty over his choice.

There was a line to be drawn between friendship and the field. In the field, Grant and Duela couldn't be his friends since it would cloud his judgement. For instance, if he chose them, the detective would have gotten away.

"I'm so happy you got what you wanted, _blad_." 

Jason didn't respond to that, he went to collect his fallen firearms but kept an eye on them from the corner of his vision. He supposed he'd forgotten that while he was away for years, Duela and Grant had developed a form of friendship, she went down on one knee by him, offering him a bottle of water with a low,

"Here." She had no facade of insanity in her voice, just the undertow of someone who cared. Grant said a quiet thanks when he accepted the water. He had to take it, whether or not he wanted any. A couple of days ago, Jason took it upon himself to learn exactly how that healing factor worked and lo, it wasn't as absolute as his father's. Grant's enhanced abilities were fuelled by directly eating away at his body's energy reserves, excessive use of them to the point of complete depletion would be fatal. 

An interesting and perhaps, later on, important thing to know.

There was an undeniable necessity to know the weaknesses of the people you surrounded yourself with, no matter you might never have a use for those weaknesses. 

Jason couldn't find it in himself to bask in the afterglow he earned by evening out the score with Grayson, not since overthinking caused the now familiar sharp pressure of a migraine to nibble at the edges of his skull. He should go.  _They_  should go. Before Kori returned. Despite abandoning his... his 'team' to her mercy before, Jason didn't want them to die when she came back. He hoped they would come to understand what a judgment call was. It wasn't personal.

"Ravager, JD, we're leaving." He didn't look at them with the order, kicking a discarded knife into his hand as he walked away. With a jerk, Grant pushed himself to his feet, Duela steadied him and both wore a set but subtle glare. There were elements of distrust the way they looked at him.

"Aye, aye _, Red Hood_."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I lopped one massive ass chapter into two, the finale should be out real soon and if you could leave me with your thoughts, I'd be as happy as a... worm. We all knew Jason and Dick weren't both gonna be alive at the end, right? 
> 
> Also, a couple peeps were wondering why Grant calls Jason "blad" and it's just British slang for blood, as in friend or family or cute shit like that.


	11. New Order

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I trust everyone here has heard the name Deathstroke?" Jason spoke up, loud, brimming with authority, addressing the stunned men and women around him. They were watching what he would do, afraid of their teenage crime lord but the sick morbid fascination that resided in every human being wanted to see what came next.

There was a new world order in Gotham and it goes as follows, obey the Hood or get comfortable in an unmarked mass burial on the edge of town. People adjusted to it fast when they realized there was no saviour in shining armour atop a white horse coming to save them. Even after days passed from the Catharsis, and thousands were declared dead or missing, Jason didn't let anyone leave. As far as he was concerned, murder was legal and anyone could do whatever they wanted, so long as they stayed inside of his walls. 

Money bought loyalists, power bought respect, fear achieved both at once.  Jason was learning that, especially when he marched into Black Mask's HQ to no protest from his henchmen. They welcomed the new order of things with surprisingly open arms. They weren't so dumb that they'd put up a fight just because the pecking order changed. They were keeping themselves in money and alive by succumbing. 

So the Outlaws, as they were quickly dubbed, set up shop in Black Mask's building, the tallest structure in Gotham and a wonderful place to survey the city burning to the ground. A thick unchanging black cloud had sat overhead for days now, unyielding to sunlight trying to bud through, thus leaving everything in gloom with nothing but the embers of fires to illuminate. 

Jason decided that Gotham was now his and no one who was smart enough objected. He had his men and everyone who wisened up and quickly signed his recruitment list begin construction of a wall around the city, complete with hydraulic gates and turret mounted firearms for those instances where people from the outside tried to get in. 

There were capes Jason had never heard of who tried to bust in and heroically defeat the evil Red Hood, liberate the people and restore order. They were met with resistance, to say the least, and now Jason was left to walk down the hall of his prison, dotted with full cells on either side. Every day, he held a public execution of a mask, just to drive home the point of 'don't fuck with me'. Up rises became less and less when this started. 

Masks stopped coming by as much.

Things were looking good from Jason's perspective. 

"How far do you think you can go with this, Hood?"

He paused abruptly and looked at the girl behind the bars, daring to speak to him. She was one of the supers captured, a white-haired, blue-eyed beauty with powers similar to Grant's, which was not really surprising, Rose was his sister. He didn't know Jason had her yet.  

"How long do you think you can hold onto your deranged fantasy of being some supreme overlord of crime?" Jason didn't like her tone or her show of insolence when she leaned on the bars, staring at him defiantly. 

"You aren't as indestructible as you think." Rose went on, so fucking determined to remain filled with authority she didn't have. Jason was going to put her on tomorrow's execution schedule. 

"It doesn't matter what I think." He eventually responded, not dignifying her with so much as a glance.

"I'm as indestructible as the people beneath me think. Image is everything, reality isn't an important factor."

Rose watched him coldly, tightening her knuckles, hands through the grating keeping them apart.

"Someone is going to stop you." Muttering, she swore and Jason shrugged, he wasn't so sure. 

"I'll let you keep fuelling your own fantasies, I have somewhere to be. Au revoir, sweetheart." She cursed at him but Jason paid it no heed, heading through the prison block and admiring the numbers of supers who'd tempted him, now unarmed and not dangerous to anyone. They forgot that Jason had notorious villains siding with him every day, he had firepower too.  

Fun fact about Tamaraneans, which is the alien he learned Kori was, they didn't like the cold. It had been a chore but he had her captured too, now confined to a dark cell where her powers didn't work with no sunlight to feed on and just to make sure, air conditioners made it way below zero for her in there. She was too weak to look up when Jason strolled by with a victory smirk. 

Joker's 'don't mess with capes or they'll mess with us' logic was flawed. They weren't as undefeatable as the tabloids and newspapers would make you think. Everyone had a weak spot. 

"Jason, we need to talk." Grant was in the office where Mask killed Speedy when Jason came in, waiting for him, apparently, and he really wasn't looking so good. The amount his powers had zapped his strength lately was astronomical and Jason found it necessary that way, he didn't want anyone around him to be able to overpower him. Call it caution. 

Grant knew his limits, however, he wouldn't allow himself to be driven beyond them by any number of tasks Jason gave him. 

"About what?" Jason indifferently inquired, more invested in kneeling to fondle Jayakrishna's ears when she came running, tongue lolling out the side of her mouth and tail wagging. He smiled when she went into a frenzy of licking him.

" _You_. You're... getting too dangerous for even yourself to be around."

Jason glanced at him, unsure of what he could mean and it didn't seem like he himself was 100% on it either. Standing there, Grant didn't exude the confidence he always seemed to. Jason had noticed it since he left his 'team' to their own devices, his old playmate had his walls up in his company. Trust was hard to earn, easy to lose, impossible to fully recover but Jason didn't need Grant's trust. He didn't like to trust people. People weren't worth it.

"You aren't being smart. Nightwing was one thing but you're giving every cape there is a reason to take you down."

Jason sighed, shaking his head when he stood and walked over to him.

"Grant, honey, just do what I say. I don't need your advice." It was a little harsh but he was a reminder of what Jason was, of the past, and if he couldn't kill everyone who knew where he came from then he'd burn the bridges.

Now that Jason was more Red Hood than anyone else, he didn't want it to ever get out that Joker controlled him and Black Mask used him. That could ruin his new reputation, his image. Grant was the last person alive who knew that and as much as it hurt to hurt him, it was what Jason needed to do to push him away. He wasn't taking a bullet for anyone else, ever again.

".... What on planet fuck happened with you? You  _aren't_  my boss, Jason, you're my friend. Or did you forget that?" 

"We  _used_  to be friends but that's when we were children. Things have changed, I don't need  _liabilities_." His eyes narrowed to cold slivers of colour and vicious though his glare was, it didn't affect Grant the way it would have someone who truly accepted they were his underling. 

"So that's what I am to you now?" He shifted his position, folded arms remaining tender with the recently broken one.

"A liability?" 

Biting the inside of his cheek, Jason nodded stiffly. It's not that he didn't want them to be whatever they were before but that relationship had no room in his life anymore. He needed henchmen he could throw in the line of fire without worrying he would lose them. Joker, Grayson, even fucking Black Mask, they all signed their defeat when they chose to care about someone.

"Jason, I didn't  _have_  to save you," Grant let him know, his irritability obvious even in his tense muscles. 

"I didn't have to free you from Pyg, I didn't have to help you kill Mask and Joker, no one made me drag you out of the school when you burned it down and you sure as hell didn't force me to sign up to this deranged revenge scheme." The distance between them had grown less at some point while the tension only wound tighter, like a strung guitar chord and Jason kept waiting for one of them to snap.

"Jaybird, I  _wouldn't_  be here if you didn't matter to me." Though severe, Grant finished that with sincerity that made Jason hate him for having it. He accepted the way things had to be, why couldn't Grant just play along? 

"That is so  _sweet_." Jason replied after giving a few seconds to convince himself that the sentiment his 'friend' expressed wasn't mutual.

"But that's not something we have in common. I  _used_  you. You're just muscle I can throw my money behind to get what I want." Jason was a good actor, the bite he put behind that and the way he stared unwaveringly at Grant left no other impression than he fully, truly meant that, from the bottom of his heart. 

"And if you can't get that through your head, then I think you might be exactly as fucking retarded as your bitch mom said when she wasted her time trying to beat brain cells into you."

".... There are so many equally bitchy ways involving Joker and Black Mask that I could respond to that with." Grant replied, unamused and irritatingly unaffected. He brushed past Jason when he left, adding over his shoulder,

"I didn't sign up to be some crazy little kid's minion. I need to be able to trust you and if I can't, you're not getting anything from me,  _blad_."

Jason's fingers dug into his arms but he didn't turn to watch him go, not even when the door slammed shut and it was just him and Jayakrishna, completely alone in what used to be Black Mask's office. Slowly, the teen blinked his eyes open -  _when had he closed them?_  - to find himself staring out of the massive windows at cold, dark, and ugly Gotham city. 

Oh, so Grant thought he'd seen Jason be crazy? Did he  _really_  think that?

Joker always surrounded himself with a mostly fabricated facade of insanity, it came from the outside in, Jason might finally accept that he had the opposite of that problem. If crazy is how everyone saw him why pretend anymore?

* * *

 

Scrolling through a playlist on his phone, Jason clicked on a song he liked, put his headphones in and dropped the device into his pocket before he went out. 

He was hardly aware that a constant small smile played on his lips. It felt too natural to notice. 

He went out that day to personally deal with rebels and anyone who didn't bend to his will. Everyone who had a separate opinion was treated to a nice little headshot. There was no room in his new version of Gotham for anyone who sided against him, it was the only way to remain in control. More times than there were numbers he knew, control had been stripped away from him and he wasn't giving it up again, not without losing his life first.

So when there were things,  _people_ , he couldn't immediately control, Jason set out to change that. 

Case in point, he dedicated a couple of hours from his afternoon entirely to going through Black Mask's storerooms until he found something he could use, a javelin. It was old, perhaps ancient, but in perfect lethal working condition, two serrated prongs thirsting for blood, a crossbar a three feet from the head to keep whatever you impaled from charging up the length of the weapon. At the end of the iron rod, a heavy weight sat, perfect for balancing the javelin in the user's hands. 

It was perfect. Jason located a duo of jagged knives too, added them to his carry-on arsenal, and continued on his way. 

Roman had all sorts of fancy gadgets and devices that the teen found would be useful to him.

Spinning the javelin, he went outside Black Mask's building, where a collection of his minions were gathered, talking amongst themselves in low voices. It looked like the gang lords and men who had some percentage of power were all here, including his backstabbing Ravager, that darling little sweetheart. 

Jason took his headphones out and wound them around his phone, putting both into the safety of his pocket.

Ravager had his balaclava pulled over his face, his voice and whatever he was discussing with someone went muffled and unheard. Jason caught things like 'crazy' and 'unpredictable'. He  was intrigued by what the conversation was but it wasn't important. Jason was behind him, he wasn't aware of him or the javelin he raised above his head until the moment it was driven through his back. 

At once, Ravager screamed, blood streaked up the shaft, Jason didn't care, he thrust the weapon clean through, until the point sunk into the ground and the other teen was forced on all fours, pinned. Thanks to the crossbar, he couldn't stand unless he pulled the whole thing through himself. 

Everyone was silent, staring with wide eyes at Jason, he calmly walked around Ravager while he gasped and choked from the blazing pain, coughing up redness that stained the lower half of his mask. 

Now face-to-face, Jason knelt by him, on the ground changing colour from the gushing rivers of crimson. 

"Wh - what the f - fuck are you d - doing?" Ravager demanded, voice heavy and uneven, the violent way he shook not up to him. Jason did enjoy that he couldn't control his own body's movements, it might get it across that he didn't hold his own strings either. 

"Making you get on your knees for me, darling." The teen responded coolly while he tested the sharpness of his dagger on his thumb, watching absently as the blade sang with ease through the layers of skin. There might have been a nibble of pain but he didn't process it. 

"Get  - get this fucking th - thing out of - of m - me." Ravager tried to rise but couldn't, hitting the crossbar with a jolt then falling back onto the sole support of his hands. He attempted yanking the spearhead from the earth, struggling to get a grip with shaking fingers and the oil slick mess his blood made of everything. 

Jason let him hurt himself before he put a rapid stop to it, raising his knife, slamming it through the bones of Ravager's hand, fixing that to the ground as well. He must've bitten through his lip stifling the noises of pain when Jason speared the other palm too, attaching him to the floor with bloody steel. 

Relentless, Hood grabbed a fistful of his mask and ripped it from over his head as he stood, exposing Ravager's gone-pale face and vicious expression, pain be damned. His pink teeth were bared and set, blood trails running down either corner of his mouth. The eyes Jason had secretly always found so beautiful were darker than the depths of hell, locked on him with... with odious  _hate_. In its purest form,  _hate_. 

Today alone, Jason had told himself he didn't care enough times for it to be true. He was just severing that childhood bridge for both of them, Grant -  _Ravager_  wouldn't do it by himself. 

"I trust everyone here has heard the name Deathstroke?" Jason spoke up, loud, brimming with authority, addressing the stunned men and women around him. They were watching what he would do, afraid of their teenage crime lord but the sick morbid fascination that resided in every human being wanted to see what came next. 

"Well, this is his  _son_ ," he gestured to Ravager without looking at him, tossing the drenched balaclava across the grounds, to the feet of his audience in case they wanted a closer look. Some leaned nearer with eyes enlarging in curiosity.

"And as Deathstroke's son, he's inherited the enhancements. The healing factor, the heightened senses, the superhuman stamina, strength, all that stuff that - I don't know about you, but  _I_  certainly don't have. He's practically indestructible, isn't he? Surely a non-meta kid like me is at a disadvantage and shouldn't even try with him, right?" Deliberately, he adopted a mock juvenile tone to finish that sentence with, right before he slammed his boot down between Ravager's shoulder blades, crushing him into the ground. Gritting his teeth, Jason applied more pressure onto him when the only sound he got was a sharply drawn breath.

He was standing on top of his only childhood friend without the slightest show of hesitancy. 

" _Wrong_. He's as much my flunkey as any one of you is." Jason ground his heel into the Ravager's back, gripping the shaft of the javelin to twist it and drag a wet scream from the other. The bigger show he put on, the more he made his underling suffer, the further across he'd get his message. He was to be feared by man and meta alike. If his so-called friends weren't off limits, no one was. 

"Any of you gets  _any_  ideas about crossing me," Jason's two-coloured glare hit them with the heat and intensity of a wildfire, "and this'll be you, whimpering like a bitch at my feet. And you.  _Don't_. Heal from something like this." 

By the way no one would meet his line of sight and quiet murmurs of agreement moved through the crowds, Jason made his point clear and well-known. This was a show of power they wouldn't soon be able to forget. He told his inner self that he didn't feel anything, therefore he didn't care how badly this affected the people who once trusted him.

"Now all of you,  _scram_. I need a word with Ravager without an audience." Jason jerked his head for them to go and lo, they all did. These fearless and feared lords and ladies of crime in Gotham City couldn't jump fast enough to obey him and it was  _beautiful_. Wouldn't daddy be proud?  

When they were by their lonesome, Jason knelt by Ravager once more and this time, the other didn't have the same untapped flame of fight to his eyes. His enhanced healing was working overtime to fix the damage, draining his energy reserves as rapidly as water leaking from a valveless tap. If that javelin wasn't removed soon, muscle and skin tissue would grow around it and make it permanently part of him. 

Jason crouched comfortably on the fronts of his feet, watching Ravager as he panted through the pain, rarely without some degree of a flinch or wince. His shallow unsteady breathing rattled in his chest like loose bolts. 

"Wh - why the f - fuck are you d - doing this?" Ravager asked, weakened by blood loss, unable to lift his face and look Jason in the eye. Jason decided to help him with that, yanking his head back by a clump of his matted hair. A strained whine escaped his throat. 

"Because I don't need you to be my friend, I need you to do what I tell you to. And darling, if you don't want that, I don't care, I'll fucking make you." 

"Y - yeah?" Ravager grit, scowling as best as he could while Jason had him by the hair. "And h - how're you - you gonna do th - that?"

"I found something in Mask's inventory that I think will help." Until now, it had been concealed inside his jacket, Jason only brought it to light then, a syringe with a needlepoint thick enough to be lethal. Even without knowing what it was, Ravager's eyes widened, he tried to pull away but he was well and truly pinned to the ground. He couldn't go anywhere or do anything to stop Jason yanking his head down and slamming the syringe into the back of his neck, directly between the vertebrae. 

He pushed down on the plunger, filling Ravager's veins with the serum that didn't do anything on its own, it was just there for the microscopic neural transmitter to have an easier time grafting to his spinal cord. Ravager jerked against the things holding him put, doing everything he could to drag himself free but Hood wouldn't allow it. As soon as the pinprick healed up in seconds, the irreparable damage was done. 

Jason stepped back and  _finally_ , he let Ravager rip his hands off the ground, knives piercing his palms when he struggled to wrap them around the spear impaling him. With a sharp tug and his renewed wave of vigour, he freed himself at last, stumbling several paces away with the javelin still sticking out of him.  

Without any thoughts of noteworthiness,  Jason watched Ravager's grappling until he steeled himself enough to tear the weapon out, a fresh gush of blood erupting and by this time, he was soaking in his own life fluid. He wasn't steady on his feet, uncoordinated movements out of his control but he made the very conscious choice to snatch the sword off his back and raise it to Jason. 

Unflinching, Jason pushed his thumb down on the switch his hand held in his pocket, eliminating the risk with the simple press of a button. 

All at once, electricity ripped through Ravager's body angrily, trapping him in his contracting, locked-up muscles. The sword fell with a clatter, he dropped down onto his knees beside it not long after, convulsing for minutes until Jason eased pressure on the switch. Groaning, Ravager barely caught himself on his skewered hands when he couldn't hold his balance kneeling; he dropped down like a used toy, panting raggedly, sides heaving so hard his ribs might be breaking.

"Cross a line, speak out of turn, question me, do anything an underling  _wouldn't_ , and that little device I just planted in your spinal cord will electrify your brain stem. I can blow your fucking head off if I wanna, so do whatever you can to not give me a reason to hurt you." With the threat lingering in the air, Jason lowered himself to Ravager's level, met his leer indifferently, and probably just to shock him less literally,  _kissed_  him.

It wasn't out of the passion of pent up feelings, Jason didn't have any romantic ones for Ravager as far as he was aware, he only wanted to force his 'friend' to squirm in his skin. He enjoyed robbing all the control - the  _power_  - away from someone normally stronger and turning them into his plaything. Actually, enjoy might be an understatement....

The tang of copper was thick on Ravager's lips, past his teeth, tasting better than it should. He didn't respond to the kiss but didn't break it, no matter Jason could sense he was  _immensely_  uncomfortable. 

But he  _didn't_  break it. He was learning remarkably fast to do as he was fucking told.

When Jason pulled back with a subtle wet pop, his blood-stained mouth hovered inches from Ravager's, and he smiled softly.

"Doesn't cost ten bucks, I see."

" _Fuck_. _You_."

"Do what I say when I say it and there's nothing bad between us. You get it, honey? I fucking  _own_  you." Ever seen the weight of words fracture something in someone's eyes? It doesn't look as dramatic as the phrasing makes it sound, but Jason saw he did it. He was sure Ravager's crystal clear irises dulled three shades closer to black when he finished that sentence.

"You're so sweet when you're at the end of your rope." Fondly, he ruffled Ravager's mattered hair to no reaction, utterly none. Ravager stared at the ground, expression lost, hurt,  _betrayed_. But at the same time, he was seething. It was then that Jason could be sure his former playmate would try to sink a knife into his back more than once in the years to come. 

Let him try.

Let him  _fucking_  try.

Red Hood got back on his feet, not even looking at the other teen as he strode off, adding  conversationally,

"Eight AM sharp tomorrow, I want you to execute a cape. Heads up, it's your sister."

"What?  _Rose_? Jason, I won't-"

Jason plunged the switch down, walking away while distorted screams and the crackle of electric whipped the air to and fro. He put his headphones back in, holding the button down until three songs passed.

Over the music, he could hear the loud twangs of iron supports snapping and metal twist and screech when that last bridge to the past broke and burned. It's about time. 

Why the hell had he been denying himself so long? Jason fucking  _loved_  crazy.

* * *

 

By the end of the day, Jason had become jittery by the hand of paranoia and reached the conclusion that he wouldn't get rid of his suffocating anxiety unless he took even more precautions. He had Duela subjected to the same treatment that fixed his unease with Ravager. They couldn't remove the transmitters and if they tried, it would send a fatal shock through their systems.

And lo, he felt slightly better. He didn't go anywhere without the trigger he could use against them. They would turn on him the moment his guard was down, he couldn't give them the chance. No one was ever getting the upper hand on him again.

Jason had only needed to use it five times in total and that was mostly in Duela's thick-headed case. She accepted it eventually, accepted how it would be. Hood couldn't get enough of turning the people who trusted him into his own personal tools. This side of betrayal was addictive.

Power was like a fur coat, made of dead things stitched together but warm and comfortable and safe. It's his drug of choice and he was hooked.

"Hood,"

Jason turned from the window, away from staring at Gotham, hand tightening around the switch in his pocket when Ravager came in. He didn't make eye contact, persisting to keep his steely gaze riveted on the floor even when a meter from his boss. It didn't go by unseen that he was on his guard, that was a constant with them now. Jason supposed he should have felt something in the wake of destroying what was once between them, but truthfully, he found himself experiencing a brand new numbness towards it. He really didn't care. 

"What do you want, Wilson?" Jason demanded when he wasn't speaking up fast enough, thumb teasing the switch while he wondered if he would have to use it. Just by lightly pressing down on the trigger, a buzz of electricity hummed through Ravager, he took it as a suitable warning to hurry the hell up before he got the real thing.

"Men posted on the North wall say a cape got through." He reluctantly agreed to speak. "I went to check on it myself, I couldn't find anyone but there were obvious signs of forced entry. A turret gun was down and four men incapacitated. I searched the city, I couldn't find any sign of the cape but I questioned a couple guys who'd seen him, they said he was looking for the Hood." 

" _Oh_?" Jason released the switch when he realised he wouldn't need it. He lessened the proximity betwixt himself and Ravager to a mere foot, he could tell it unnerved the other but he did a good job keeping that as hidden as possible. 

"And who is this new cape?" He asked, relishing in the way he made Ravager stiffen and his eyes widen a fraction with something like a tinge of dread when his hand slid back into the pocket he  _knew_  the device was in.

"I don't know, he's elusive, tough to get a glimpse of but those informants say he dresses like a bat."

"A  _bat_?" Jason smiled, rocking back on his heels. Already, he could name the little spark lighting up in him as anticipation. He'd been bored lately. Hopefully, this cape wouldn't go down as easily as the rest and actually put up a fight worth mentioning. 

"Well, this should get interesting."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... Now what do I waste my time doing?


End file.
